Parámetros de control en el proceso de elaboración de harina de plátano (Musa AAB) en diferentes edades de cosecha.

Abstract

An experimental work was carried out at the experimental farm "Rio Suma" of the Agricultural Engineering program of the Universidad Laica Eloy Alfaro de Manabí extension in El Carmen, with the objective of determining the control parameters in the process of elaboration of plantain flour (Musa AAB) at different harvesting ages; For the research, a Block Design Completely Randomized (DBCA) with 6 treatments and three replications was used, the treatments consisted of the harvest age of the green plantains after the sheathing (9, 10, 11, 12, 13, rejection), the mean of the treatments were compared with Tukey's test; the bunches were harvested according to age, the weights of the pulp and peel were taken separately, then the pulp was taken and the fresh weight was obtained, they were cut into slices no more than 3 cm thick, the slices of green plantain pulp were placed in the oven for dehydration, at a temperature of 90 °C for 30 minutes, stirring every 2 minutes to avoid overcooking the plantain. The results determined significant differences (p < 0.05) in peel weight, pulp weight, dehydrated weight and flour yield, being the treatments with the longest week the highest in these variables, while for the percentage of dry matter no statistical differences were found (p > 0.05), as for the chemical analysis the shortest week of harvest reached higher percentages of moisture, protein and fat.