Current Research in Nutrition and Food Science - An open access, peer reviewed international journal covering all aspects of Nutrition and Food Science

Native Fruit Dehydration System with Arduino

Freddy Elar Ferrari Fernandez^1*, Nilton Cesar Ayra Apac¹, Richard Piero Bardales Linares¹, Giovanni Fredi Tuesta Galán¹and Richard Michel Marin Sevillano²

¹School of Systems Engineering, National University of Ucayali, Ucayali, Perú,

²School of systems and computing, University of Huánuco, Huánuco, Perú,

Corresponding Author Email: freddy_ferrari@unu.edu.pe

Our jungle has many benefits, but during the fruit production season, a high percentage of them are lost due to overproduction. This is why an alternative is proposed to preserve native fruits using the controlled dehydration technique, applying Open Source Arduino, throughout the process. The main objective of this research was to determine what effect the control of temperature and humidity parameters with Arduino has on the dehydration of five native fruits, as well as to know the organoleptic characteristics of five types of dehydrated native fruits and to determine to what extent the enzymatic activity of five types of dehydrated native fruits decreases. The research was carried out using experimental level technology. Since it is a finite population (450 units), the sample size was determined by the formula of (Murray and Larry, 2009), being 149 units, so 30 samples of each type of fruit were taken, making a total of 150 units; applying the Friedman test because they are repetitive measurements. For the evaluation of the organoleptic characteristics, the tasting of 100 students from the Faculty of Systems Engineering and Civil Engineering of the National University of Ucayali was taken into consideration, chosen randomly, not probabilistic; we applied the Likert scale in the form in order to evaluate the opinion of the people. The influence of controlling temperature and humidity parameters with Arduino in the dehydration process of five native fruits has been determined; Both the temperature of 48°C and the humidity of 42% remained constant throughout the dehydration process. In the case that the system sensor detects the temperature that reaches “>= 50°C” it ​​activates the operation of the air extractors and deactivates them if it reaches “<=38°C”. The organoleptic characteristics such as: color, shape, smell, texture and flavor do not vary significantly in the analysis of our sample, which had a level of significance (p<0.05), confirming our hypothesis. Finally, according to the evaluation of the enzymatic activity we can conclude that: the percentage of humidity decreases significantly, being the Oenocarpus bataua with 2.27% of humidity the lowest and the Myrciaria Dubia with 21.68% the highest, while in acidity: the Myrciaria Dubia with 0.13% is the fruit with the lowest acidity, while the Oenocarpus bataua with 3.6% is the highest, in case of water activity it is minimal with the Oenocarpus bataua with 0.5195 and the highest the Solanum sessiliflorum Dunal with 0.5683.

Arduino; Dehydration system; Native fruits; Temperature, Humidity

[ HTML Full Text]