Influence of Moisture Content on Some Physical Properties of Rubus fruticosus

Abstract

Some engineering properties of Rubus fruticosus fruits and nuts and were characterized in order to provide fundamental information about their properties that will aid in designing modern technology for their handling, processing, storage, preservation, quality evaluation, distribution and marketing. The engineering properties studied are some physical property of Rubus fructicosus fruits and nuts, (moisture content, size and shape of the fruits and nuts). The fruits and nuts were conditioned to five and three different moisture and three and four different temperature levels, respectively before testing. American Standards for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) standard procedures were used to test all the properties considered. Mathlab and Microsoft excel statistical packages were used to analyse the generated data and the means were compared using the analysis of variance (ANOVA) at 5% level of probability. The results obtained revealed that the major, intermediate and minor diameters of the fruits range 35.14 – 34.09 mm, 22.44 – 20.25 mm and 22.03 – 19.92 mm respectively for long and, 26.66 – 23.05 mm, 16.69 – 13.99 mm and 16.17 – 13.48 mm respectively for short fruits. The average geometric mean diameter (GMD) of the fruit ranged from 25.90 to 23.95 mm for long and 19.13 to 16.27 mm for short fruits at a moisture range of 40.91 – 11.03% wet basis. The nuts also ranged from 36.75 – 37.36 mm, 13.19 – 13.66 mm and 12.89 – 13.18 mm respectively for long nuts, 23.26 – 23.87 mm, 10.93 – 11.24 mm and 10.76 – 11.04 mm respectively for short nuts at 10.2% - 25.06% wet basis. The fruits and nuts are oblong in shape.