Drying Concentration of Fruits and Vegetables Through Solar Energy Compare with Traditional Method and find the Nutritional Value

Abstract

One of the earliest techniques for preserving food for later use is food drying. It newlinecan either replace canning or freezing or work in conjunction with such newlinetechniques. Food drying is straightforward, secure, and simple to master. newlineIn the present study Fruits and vegetables under consideration have been newlinecollected from four local markets to get the better results. A total of 5 Kg each newlineof seven fruits and vegetables each were taken into consideration.The fruits newlinecollected include mango, pineapple, apple, strawberry, banana, guava and newlinepomegranate while the selected vegetables for study are bitter gourd, newlinefenugreek, mint, tomato, capsicum, carrot and cauliflower. newlineThe cleaning process involved the following steps. Cleaning, washing, peeling, newlineor stripping leaves from stems. Cleaning was done by hand in order to get newlinebetter results. The procedure of washing was repeated several times. After newlineremoving the external non-edible portions of the fruits and vegetables they newlinewere sliced or cut into 2-3 mm thickness pieces. Five replicate drying cycles newlinewere performed simultaneously. The drying cycles include hot air oven, newlinemicrowave, direct sun drying, solar dryer and improved solar dryer. For all newlinefruits and vegetables, the materials were uniformly spread. The dried samples newlinewere grinded and sieved through 0.5 mm sieve to get equal size granule and newlinepacked in air tight polythene bags. newlineFrom the results it is clearly seen that the dried fruits and vegetables can retain newlinethe good number of nutrient values. Also, it is very clear from the results and newlinediscussion that the improved solar drying technique shows the highest nutrient newlinevalues for all the fruits and vegetables as compared to the other drying newlinetechnology.