TITLE:
Moisture Migration and Bulk Nutrients Interaction in a Drying Food Systems: A Review
AUTHORS:
Israel Sunmola Afolabi
KEYWORDS:
Preservation; Safe Moisture Content; Scattered Plot; Threshold Boundary; Bonds
JOURNAL NAME:
Food and Nutrition Sciences,
Vol.5 No.8,
March
26,
2014
ABSTRACT: Drying is a technique that involves removal of
moisture using heat energy. This heat affects the protein components in foods
especially the thiosulphide groups, which causes hydrophobic bond break that
has been attributed greatly to denaturation during drying. Safe moisture
content (SMC) is the extent to which moisture can be withdrawn from food crops
during drying that such crops can be considered safe for storage with minimal
loss of nutritional qualities. Several reported minimum moisture contents, and
bulk nutrients’ levels of crops were
collected for the purpose of this review, and scattered plot graph was employed
to determine the levels of bond interaction between moisture content and each
bulk nutrients in the various dried food categories. The moisture contents in
grains, root and tuber crops, fruits and vegetables, and cash crops formed a SMC threshold boundary within the 6% - 14%; 0% - 10%; 0% - 22%; and 0% - 30% respectively.
Crude fibre and most especially the ash content played the most crucial role by
providing the strongest bond interaction with migrating moisture during drying
of all the food crops’ categories, and are of
utmost important in the determination of SMC.