Journal of Environmental and Agricultural Sciences (JEAS). Iqbal et al., 2020. Volume 22(2): 26-32
Open Access – Research Article
Effect of Solar Drying Techniques on Biochemical Characteristics of Dhakki Dates
Mohsin Iqbal  1,*, Summar A. Naqvi 1, Iqrar A. Khan 1, Muhammad J. Jaskani 1,
Muhammad Waseem 1, Muhammad Ali Ahsen 1
1 Institute of Horticultural Sciences, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan
Abstract: Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) relates to the family Arecaceae. Most developing countries cannot produce enough food to meet their increasing populations. A considerable percentage of crop items produced in some of these areas reported rapid deterioration of postharvest quality, mainly due to inadequate or non-existent processing and storage facilities. Drying is the most critical process in dates. So, different techniques have been used for better drying of this delicious fruit. Therefore, the trial was conducted to evaluate the performance of solar and hybrid dryers to investigate the drying conditions for date fruit. Two-factor completely randomized design (CRD) was applied, and comparison of mean was made by using Tukey’s test at 5% level of significance. In our research, total soluble solids (10.38%) were more in the solar dryer as compared to the hybrid dryer (9.51%). Hybrid dryer (0.808%) achieved more acidity as compared to the solar dryer (0.717%). Vitamin C content of processed dates differed significantly in these dryers as solar dryer, and hybrid dryer showed 3.68% and 8.51% vitamin C, respectively. The higher amount of reducing sugars (18.58%) was recorded in date fruits processed in the hybrid dryer as compared to the solar dryer (18.30%). Consequently, values of total sugars were also significantly higher for date fruits dried in the hybrid dryer (31.48%) as compared to the solar dryer (30.98%). As for as the non-reducing sugars are concerned, they were more (12.88%) in the hybrid dryer as compared to the solar dryer (12.69 %). Thus, it can be concluded that good quality dates can be prepared by adopting hybrid dryers as compared to solar drying techniques.
Keywords: Date palm, Arecaceae, solar dryer, hybrid dryer, total soluble solids, quality, postharvest.
*Corresponding author: Mohsin Iqbal: malikmohsin00123@gmail.com
Cite this article as:Â Iqbal, M., S.A. Naqvi, I.A. Khan, M.J. Jaskani, M. Waseem, M.A. Ahsen. 2020. Effect of solar drying techniques on biochemical characteristics of Dhakki dates. Journal of Environmental and Agricultural Sciences. 22(2): 26-32.
Copyright © Iqbal et al., 2020. 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 appropriately cited and credited.
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