Abstract

  The experiments were carried out at Postharvest Research Institute (PHRI), Department of Agriculture, Nay Pyi Taw and the Division of Postharvest Technology, Advanced Centre for Agricultural Research and Education (ACARE), Yezin Agricultural University (YAU) from April to August in 2019. This experiment was conducted to investigate the quality of dried chilli by open sun drying and solar tunnel drying. A factorial arrangement in completely randomized design (CRD) was laid out with four replications. The hybrid variety of Champion 777 red chilli was used as the pretreatment with blanching. The data on moisture content (% w.b), drying rate (%/h), water activity (aw), color difference (∆E), browning index (BI), ascorbic acid content (mg/100g) and aflatoxin content (ppb) were collected. The final moisture content ranged from 5.8 to 7.3% (w.b) depending on drying method. The open sun drying method took the longest drying time of 23 hours for blanched chilli and 25 hours for non-blanched followed by the solar tunnel drying method (19 hours). Most of the treatments showed no aflatoxin content and there was permitted level in the blanched chilli of solar tunnel drying method. From these findings, the red chilli dried with solar tunnel had considerably lower in moisture content and water activity with less in browning index and color difference. Moreover, solar tunnel drying method retained more ascorbic acid content than open sun dried samples. Therefore, solar tunnel drying method was much better than open sun drying method with respect to less time for drying, low moisture content, bright red color with high ascorbic content.

Keywords: Ascorbic Acid; Aflatoxin; Color Difference; Drying Methods; Moisture Content

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Citation

Citation: Than Than Soe., et al. “Study on Different Drying Methods of Red Chilli (Capsicum annuum L.)" Acta Scientific Nutritional Health 4.4 (2020): 62-66.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Than Than Soe., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.