The paper presents a kinetic study of solar dried mint (Mentha spicata L.) without any pre-treatment. Mint grows effortlessly in Kashmir valley but is not obtainable throughout the year because of inconsiderate weather conditions. The genus belongs to the Labiatae family and includes large varieties with different properties. A significant quality parameter is its colour. The drying kinetics of mint leaves dried in Domestic Solar Dryer in terms of colour attributes, moisture content, drying time, non enzymatic browning, water activity, rehydration ratio was studied. This study is very useful for household scale drying of mint leaves to optimize drying process and to achieve superior quality dried product at home maintaining its colour and aroma.
This paper presents a kinetic study of solar dehydrated mint (Mentha spicata L.) with no prior treatment. The drying kinetics of mint leaves dried in Domestic Solar Dryer in terms of colour attribute, moisture content, drying time, non enzymatic browning, water activity, rehydration ratio were calculated. This study is very useful for household scale drying of mint leaves to optimize drying process and to achieve superior quality dried product at home maintaining its colour and aroma without incurring huge cost.
Thenatural convective domestic dryer has been designed and fabricated in conformity with the atmospheric conditions of Kashmir Valley. Bottle gourd was dehydrated in the dryer and samples were analyzed for quality attributes. The drying time has reduced to 22 hours, water activity of the sampleis restricted to low value (0.349) leading to constrained microbial growth. Moisture content of the dried samples is found to be 2.842 % which is significantly small in comparison to open sun-dried sample (10.18 %). Non-enzymatic browning results shows the absorbance value of 0.042 indicating transmittance of 90% while as the samples dried in open sun have absorbance of 0.198 (transmittance of 65%). The significance of the result was confirmed by using the one sample T- test which showed significant difference between the Solar dried and open dried samples.
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