‎EFFECT OF SLICE THICKNESS, TEMPERATURE, DRYING METHOD AND STORAGE MEDIUM ON THE QUALITY AND SHELF LIFE OF COOKING BANANA

The study examined the effect of slice thickness and drying temperature on the quality and shelf life of cooking banana. The drying medium employed were open sun drying and oven drying, where the open sun served as control. Results showed that all the samples dried in both medium had a uniform colour, but after a period of storage, samples of open sun were noticed to had changes in colour. Drying was observed to had been achieved at 7 and 10 hours at temperature of 70 and 60℃ respectively, for 5mm slice thickness dried in the oven, as compared to open sun drying and oven drying at 50℃, which took 11 and 15 hours respectively. For 10mm slice thickness, drying was achieved at 10 and 15 hours when drying in oven at temperature of 70 and 60℃ respectively. For 15mm slice thickness, drying was achieved at 12 and 18 hours at temperature of 70 and 60℃ respectively when drying in oven, as compared to open sun drying. This shows that, as the slice thickness of the product increased, the time of drying also increased. The moisture content of the sample dried under open sun was averagely reduced from 68.35 to 12.02% (d.b.). Proximate analysis revealed that moisture content, lipid content, crude protein, crude fibre and energy level were higher in open sun-dried samples, than samples dried in the solar dryer. However, the ash content and carbohydrate content were higher in the solar dried sample than the products from the control experiment. The properties indicate that the solar dryer is more acceptability in terms of advancing the final quality of the product than open sun drying.