Abstract:
Tomato is a worldwide and highly perishable vegetable crop that is challenging to transport, store, and use for a long time during postharvest. This study was initiated to investigate the effect of pretreatments and drying methods on the quality attributes of tomato powder. The experiment had two factors: pretreatments (blanching, potassium metabisulfite, salt, and untreated as a control) and drying methods (oven, solar cabinet, Arc’Teryx solar dryer, and open sun as a control), which were arranged in a factorial experimental design. The study showed that the interaction of pretreatments and drying methods had a highly significant effect on tomato powder's physicochemical properties, proximate composition, functional properties, sensory acceptance, and storage stability parameters. The physicochemical parameters ranged from 4.44-5.0, 0.23-0.34, 0.61-0.94 7.82-9.9oBrix and 21.23-40.16 mg/100 for pH, water activity, TA, TSS, and vitamin C of tomato powder. The values of colour attributes ranged from 42.94-57.75, 13.97-29.95, 26.40-40.84, and 14.29-22.56 for L*, a*, b*, and ΔΕ* for tomato powder colour respectively. The proximate analysis also revealed that the tomato powder had respective ranges for moisture content, total ash, crude fat, crude protein, crude fiber, total carbohydrate, and gross energy that have ranged from 7.85-12.30%, 6.90-11.49%, 1.51-3.06%, 9.39-15.72%, 10.68-14.64%, 47.34-59.68%, and 262.94-302.20 Kcal/100g. The maximum limits of total bacteria count for stored tomato powder were 1.27, 3.64, 7.50, and 8.64 log CFU/g at 0, 30, 60, and 90 days, respectively. The maximum limits for yeast and mold, 1.07, 2.68, 4.43, and 4.96 logs CFU/g occurred at 0, 30, 60, and 90 days, respectively. The moisture content, water activity, and colour attributes of tomato powder samples were highly significantly influenced by the interaction of pretreatments and drying methods during storage stability. The panelists preferred the sensory attributes of tomato powder that had been prepared with KMS and dried in the oven. The study showed that the combination of KMS and Arc’Teryx solar dryer was the best for producing tomato powder and the combination of KMS and oven dryer was the best on the microbial load allowed limit for tomato powder.
Keywords: Drying Methods, Physicochemical Properties, Pretreatments, Proximate Composition, Tomato Powder