Determinação da vitamina C na fruta da palma.

Abstract

The osmo-convective drying is used to guarantee the quality and increase the shelf life of foods. Due to commercial, feed and medicinal importance, exists a great interest in becoming ecnomically more attractive the production of prickly pear. In order to avoid the nutrient losses during drying, several studies must be made to determine the optimal processing conditions. Among them, the content of the C vitamin in the fruit of the palm before and after the osmo-convective treatment seems to be a good indicator of quality. Therefore, the content of ascorbic acid in the fruit of the palm (Opuntia ficus-indicates) submitted to the osmotic dehydration was studied in this work. The osmotic dehydration was conducted by sucrose solutions of 30º, 40° and 50° Brix and the convective drying in a fixed bed drier at 55°C with 1,3 ms-1 air temperature and velocity . The obtained results suggest that with time of immersion of 6 hours under osmotic dehydration in a 50 º Brix solution folloed by convective drying had presented the best results with C vitamin concentration corresponding to 0,2417 and 0,7275 mg of AA/100 gram of sample, at the end of each of both steps, respectively.