Use of a forced convection solar dryer for the reduction of postharvest losses: case of the ‘akikon’ tomato variety in benin (West Africa)

Abstract

The local variety tomato (Lycopercicum esculentum Mill) named ‘akikon’ is one of the most consumed and widely cultivated fruiting vegetables in Benin Republic. In this work, we designed and built a dryer usable for limiting the frequent losses of the massive produced tomatoes. This paper analyzes the first results, obtained from the different experiments carried out with the developed dryer, in a context of forced convection. The results showed that increasing the temperature from 55 to 70 °C resulted in a shorter drying time decreasing from 1266 to 672 min with a brighter colour of the dried tomatoes for 70 °C. However, the increase of temperature does not affect the smell of the dried tomatoes. After drying, 7 to 8 months were required before we notice a colour change (from red to red-brown) of the dried product , indicating that the storage method still needs to be improved.