Ernest Ekow Abano

University of Cape Coast | UCC · Department of Agricultural Engineering

The influence of sprouting on tiger nut's (TN) nutritional, functional, and phytochemical quality was examined, and the flour used for bread making to evaluate the feasibility as a functional ingredient. TN was sprouted and sampled at 3 days intervals for 12 days, dried and milled into flour and analyzed. Subsequently, 25% of wheat flour (WF) was r...

Eggplants are highly nutritious and feature prominently in food recipes in the tropics. However, losses in weight, firmness, and nutrients affect the quality of the fruit after harvest. This work investigated the use of beeswax as a potential coating to improve the quality of eggplant fruit. Eggplant fruit were coated with a 3% beeswax solution alo...

Tiger nut is a valuable source of fiber, lipids, minerals, and carbohydrates. However, avenues for incorporating tiger nuts into food remain underexplored, especially in several tropical countries where the plant grows well. The current study investigated the effects of partially substituting wheat flour (WF) with tiger nut flour (TNF) on the physi...

The orange‐fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) is being promoted for consumption as a public health tool to combat vitamin A deficiency diseases in Africa. As a staple diet in many households in West Africa, ‘fufu’ aptly lends itself to fortification with OFSP for the delivery of essential micronutrients for health improvement. In this study, the nutrition...

This study investigated the effects of partially substituting wheat flour (WF) with tiger nut flour (TNF) on the physical and sensory properties of different bread types. The substitution was performed at a WF:TNF ratio of 100:0, 90:10, 85:15, 80:20, 75:25 and 70:30 for butter bread (Bb), tea bread (Tb) and sugar bread (Sb). Substituting WF with TN...

Aloe vera gel has been investigated as possible edible coating to help improve the storage life of fruits after harvest. The study sought to investigate the effect Aloe vera gel coating with or without citric acid pretreatment on the quality of eggplant fruits during low temperature storage and in shelf life. Briefly, eggplants were coated with Alo...

The objective of this work was to identify the optimal drying conditions to produce better quality dried Moringa oleifera leaves with the best drying kinetics using microwave and steam blanching pre-treatments prior to hot air drying. For this purpose, the effect of microwave power, microwave time, steaming time, and air temperature on drying kinet...

Different proportions of orange‐fleshed sweet potatoes (OFSP) were used to substitute cassava mash and fermented spontaneously to produce composite gari—a gritty‐crispy ready‐to‐eat food product. Both the amount of OFSP and the fermentation duration (FD) caused significant increases in the β‐carotene content of the composite gari. OFSP addition red...

Water productivity has become a key requirement in sustainable crop production and environmental management. Deficit irrigation (DI) and partial root-zone drying irrigation (PRDI) are two strategies that have been exploited to maximize crop production per unit water, with attendant effect on the quality attributes of harvest index. We employed meta...

This study investigated the effect of air temperature, microwave power, and pomace thickness on the drying kinetics and quality of dried carrot pomace. The study established that the drying of carrot pomace occurs in the falling rate period, suggesting that drying was driven by molecular diffusion. The microwave-drying moisture diffusivity increase...

Eggplant, a major fruit consumed in Africa, suffers from huge losses in quality due to the high perishability of the fruit after harvest. The objective of this work was to investigate the effect of cassava starch coating combined with low temperature storage on extending the quality of eggplant fruits, and to determine the optimal coating condition...

Background Food insecurity and poverty rates in Ghana are highest in the districts from latitude 8° N upwards. These have motivated several interventions aimed at addressing the food insecurity via promoting agricultural growth. An assessment of the overall impact of these interventions on food security is necessary to guide policy design and futur...

List of projects included in the review after screening processes and summaries of selected case studies. (DOCX)

PRISMA flow chart. (DOCX)

The effect of microwave-assisted convective air-drying on the drying kinetics and quality of mango was evaluated. Both microwave power and pretreatment time were significant factors but the effect of power was more profound. Increase in microwave power and pretreatment time had a positive effect on drying time. The nonenzymatic browning index of th...

The physical and mechanical properties of the newly released "Tafo Hybrid" and the traditional "Amelonado" cocoa varieties were studied. Quasi-static uniaxial compressive loads were applied along the lateral and longitudinal axes of the beans after conditioning to moisture contents between 5 and 21% (wb). Moisture-induced changes in the size of "Ta...

The effect of microwave and blanch pretreatments on the drying kinetics and quality of white yam (Dioscorea rotundata) was investigated. Yam cubes destined for hot air drying at temperatures 70-90°C were predried in a domestic microwave or blanched in hot water for 1-5 min. Microwave pretreatment time had a positive significant effect on drying rat...

The water-soluble vitamins (WSV): ascorbic acid (vitamin C), thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), panthothenic acid (B5), pyridoxine, and pyridoxal (B6), folic acid (B9), biotin(B8) , and B12 are very essential in the diet of humankind. As a result of ever increasing pressures from both consumers and legal enforcers, to specify accurately n...

A far-infrared radiation (FIR) catalytic laboratory dryer was designed by us and used to dry tomato. The kinetics of drying of tomato slices with FIR energy was dependent on both the distance from the heat source and the sample thickness. Numerical evaluation of the simplified Fick's law for Fourier number showed that the effective moisture diffusi...

The degree of hydrolysis (DH) and angiotensin I-converting enzyme (ACE)-inhibitory activity of vital wheat gluten (VWG) hydrolyzed using Alcalase were investigated using Box-Behnken response surface methodology (RSM). The mean responses were fitted to a second order polynomial to obtain regression equations. The enzyme-substrate ratio and the hydro...

Vegetable drying is an alternative method to curb post harvest decay of vegetables and a process to produce dried vegetables, which can be directly consumed or used as ingredients for the preparation of soups, stews, baby foods, cakes, puddings, and many other foods. In this study, the effect of ultrasound frequency and sonication time as pre-treat...

The response surface method was used to investigate the results of experiment designed with the Box-Behken approach to make known the effects of air temperature, air velocity and sample thickness, on drying time, lycopene content, ascorbic acid content, non-enzymatic browning and color of dried tomato slices. Three levels of temperature (40 to 60C)...

The study investigated the influence of four microwave powers on the drying kinetics and quality of tomato slices in a microwave-vacuum dryer at vacuum pressures of 0.04, 0.05 and 0.06 MPa. The results showed that increase in microwave-vacuum drying conditions increased drying rates and resulted in decreased drying time from 84 to 14 min. The nonen...

The effects of different pretreatments and temperature on the drying characteristics of ripe Gros Michel banana slices were investigated. 5 and 7 mm thick slices of bananas were pretreated with four different pretreatments such as ascorbic acid, lemon juice, salt solution, honey dip and a control for 10 minutes, each replicated three times. Pretrea...

In this study, evaporative cooling barn was designed, constructed and tested using two varieties of sweet potato. The mean dry bulb température and relative humidity of the inside and outside air stream were 25°C and 90% and 31.5°C and 67.5%, respectively. The Systems cooling efficiency was determined to be 127%. A test on the evaporative cooling b...

The storage of sweet potato tuberous roots in tropical countries is a major challenge to farmers and retailers due to unfavourable climatic conditions. In this research the storage performance of sweet potato roots in an evaporative cooling barn was investigated with three différent pre-storage treatments - ash, brine and Lantana camara extract to...

The study investigated the effect of different pretreatments of citric acid (CA), potassium metabisulphite (KMS), and ethylenediamine Tetraacetic acid (EDTA) on the drying characteristics and chemical composition of garlic slices in a convective hot air dryer at drying temperatures of 45, 50 and 55 o C. From the results obtained, the moisture diffu...

The influence of different drying temperatures on the drying kinetics and quality of tomato slices was studied. In particular, the effect of hot air temperature on the lycopene content, non-enzymatic browning, colour and flavour changes during drying at various temperatures in the range of 50-80 o C was investigated. Drying time reduced from 1140 m...

The effect of moisture content on the physical properties of the black variety of tiger nut was investigated using a completely randomized design, for four moisture content levels initially at 32% and sun dried to 27, 22 and 17% (wb) moisture contents. In these moisture contents, the major (length), intermediate (width), minor (thickness) and geome...

The storage of sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) is confronted with a myriad of post harvest challenges resulting in heavy losses during marketing and storage in tropical Africa. In this study two storage structures were evaluated and compared for the storage of two sweet potato varieties. A completely randomized design (CRD) was used and the roots...

The aim of this study was to assess the drying characteristics and physio-organoleptic properties of dried pineapple slices under different pretreatments. Four sliced pineapple treatments (ascorbic acid, salt solution, lemon juice, honey dip) and one control, each replicated four times were dried in an oven at a temperature of 65°C for 16 h. Statis...