ABSTRACT

Tomato as an extremely nutritious vegetable crop is highly seasonal and perishable vegetables in nature, large quantities of this produce are wasted during peak harvesting periods and hence the need to develop suitable methods to convert the produce to shelf-stable products. Therefore this work was carried out to evaluate the chemical and sensory properties of stew produced from dried instant tomato prepared with three (3) drying methods. Tomato fruits were purchased from the market and subjected to drying processes using oven, sun and greenhouse drying methods. The samples were dried to constant weight and milled while fresh tomato was used as a control sample. Tomato stew was reconstituted from the dried samples and also from fresh tomato which served as control. The mineral nutrients (Ca, Mg, Na, K, P, Cu, Fe, Zn, and I), vitamins (vitamins A, C, B₁, B₂, B₃ and B₉) of both dried and stew samples as well as sensory quality of the stew samples were evaluated using standard procedures. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test was used to separate means that are significantly different at (p<0.05). The result shows increase in minerals contents of the dried samples when compared to the fresh tomato sample from (9.56mg, 10.61mg, 4.45mg, 218.98mg, 23.65mg,0.05mg, 0.39mg.0.15mg and 1.74g/100g respectively for (Ca, Mg, Na, K, P, Cu, Fe, Zn and I) to the highest values of the dried samples (45.82mg, 42.50mg, 40.17mg,1072.90,143.45mg, 0.23mg,2.53mg, 1.27mg and 3.5g/100) respectively for (Vitamin A, C, B₁, B₂, B₃,) to the highest value of the dried sample. (3.85mg, 12.0mg, 0.03mg,0.024, 0.516mg, and 0.030mg/100g) with oven dried samples having the highest value of Vitamin A, C, and B₉ while green house had the highest value for B₁, B₂ and B₃. The prepared stew sample further decrease in the value of vitamin when compare to the uncooked dried sample. Sensory scores for the stew samples indicated that oven dried tomato stew sample compared more favorably with the fresh tomato stew in all the sensory attributes evaluated (taste, color, flavor, texture appearance and overall acceptability) with no significant difference (p<0.005) existing between the two dried samples. It was therefore concluded that dried tomato significantly increase in mineral content but decrease in vitamin content when compared to the fresh tomato sample with oven dried method retain the highest amount of nutrient contents in dried samples.