Determination of Moisture in Fish Muscles Using a Domestic Microwave Oven

Abstract

This work highlights using a domestic microwave oven to determine moisture in fish tissues. Also, it compares it with other gravimetric methods established employing a conventional oven (AOAC) and infrared radiation. The optimization of the microwave method was performed utilizing a two-level full factorial design. The AOAC method, which uses a temperature of 105 °C, requires 130 min for the analysis, while the microwave method can be done in 2 min. Intraday and interday tests evaluated the precision of both methods. The determination of the moisture of the fishes Cynoscion acoupa, Argyrosomus regius, Carassius auratus, Sardinella longiceps, Thunnus, Merluccius, Caranx latus, and Brachyplatystoma vaillantii was performed using the microwave and AOAC methods. The analysis of variance and the paired t-test showed no significant differences in the results obtained using these two methods. Also, moisture in other fish tissues was quantified using microwave radiation.