Abstract
BackgroundPostharvest treatments are crucial to the quality of cocoa finished products. This study aimed at investigating the effects of durations of fermentation and drying on the quality of cocoa (Theobroma cacao) beans during the rainy season. The study employed a 4 × 3 factorial with four fermentation durations of 5, 6, 7 and 8 days and three drying periods of 4, 5 and 6 days, resulting in a total of 12 treatment combinations, laid in a Completely Randomized Design with three replications. Bean quality data were collected on bean count/100 g, moisture content and cut test attributes including mouldy, slaty and purple, as well as percentage purity.ResultsThe study showed that the applied fermentation and drying periods single handedly resulted in moisture content higher than the recommended, coupling 8 days fermentation with 6 days drying period resulted in a moisture content of 5.6% which falls below the acceptable standard (7.5%) recommended. Number of beans/100 g increased with increasing fermentation and drying periods. Coupling any of the fermentation periods with 5 or 6 days drying duration resulted in mould content within the acceptable grade 1 limit (3%). Longer fermentation period coupled with any of the drying durations resulted in very encouraging and minimal values of purple, while coupling 6, 7 or 8 days fermentation period with 6 days drying resulted in slaty content within the grade 1 limit (3%).ConclusionThe overall effect of the treatments on the quality attributes from the cut test revealed that 8 days fermentation with the traditional leave heap method, coupled with 6 days sun drying during the rainy season, resulted in superior bean quality with a percentage purity of 98.00%.
Highlights
Postharvest treatments are crucial to the quality of cocoa finished products
It was observed that moisture content declined from a maximum of 12.5% at 5 days to 11.9% at 6 days of fermentation and remained constant until day 7 before decreasing steadily again to a minimum of 8.4% when fermented for 8 days
Drying fermented beans for 4 days in the rainy season resulted in moisture content of 13.1%, while 5 and 6 days drying periods resulted in 11.3% and 8.9% moisture contents, respectively
Summary
Postharvest treatments are crucial to the quality of cocoa finished products. This study aimed at inves‐ tigating the effects of durations of fermentation and drying on the quality of cocoa (Theobroma cacao) beans during the rainy season. Cocoa (Theobroma cacao) is one of the ancient crops of the lowland tropical forest believed to have originated from Central and Southern America (Presilla 2009; Coe and Coe 2013). 50 countries cultivate the crop on 0.2% of the world’s agricultural land. Cocoa is the backbone supporting the economies of some West African countries including Ghana. The country is almost synonymously known by the crop, with the slogan “Ghana, Cocoa! Cocoa averagely contributes 6% of Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (ICCO 2007)
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