Milkesa Tujoo Feyera , Umer Asrat , Melkamu Hinsermu

Melkassa Agricultural Research Center, Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, P.O. Box 2003, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Horticulture, 2024, Vol. 14, No. 5   doi: 10.5376/ijh.2024.14.0032
Received: 23 Jul., 2024    Accepted: 15 Sep., 2024    Published: 02 Oct., 2024

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Feyera M., Asrat U., and Hinsermu M., 2024, Effect of drying methods on physicochemical properties of hot pepper, International Journal of Horticulture, 14(5): 310-318 (doi: 10.5376/ijh.2024.14.0032)

Improper drying of hot pepper after harvest is a prominent cause of post-harvest losses. In Ethiopia, hot pepper is mostly dried using the sun drying method before being processed into a powder. However, it's physicochemical qualities and application of other drying techniques were not well studied. Therefore, this study was aimed to evaluate the physicochemical properties of two hot pepper varieties dried under sun and oven drying methods. The experiment was arranged using factorial design and conducted by drying two hot pepper varieties under sun at a maximum temperature of 28.5 °C for 96 hours and oven drying at a temperature of 80 °C for 7 hours. The determined physicochemical properties were moisture content, pH, total soluble solids (TSS), oleoresin content, total carotenoids, browning index, extractable and surface color. The result showed that the highest moisture content (11.33%) was recorded for sun dried Marako fana hot pepper whereas the lowest moisture content (3.17%) was noted for Gababa hot-pepper dried under oven drying method. The highest pH (5.92), bulk density (0.52 g/cm³), extractable color (228.62) and surface color (22.94) were noted for sun-dried Marako fana. In addition, the highest total soluble solids (3.83 ^oBrix) and yellowness (29.02) were recorded for oven dried Marako fana hot pepper. However, the highest oleoresin (9.94%) and redness (a* value) (20.79) were noted for oven dried Gababa hot pepper. The present finding also revealed that Statistically, non-significant (p˃0.05) differences were observed for luminosity (L* value) and carotenoids of dried hot pepper under sun and oven drying methods. Some physicochemical properties of hot pepper powder were improved by sun and oven drying methods, and further study is needed to optimize these drying methods for the production of hot pepper powder.

Hot pepper; Gababa; Marako fana; Drying methods; Physicochemical properties; Color