The Quality Improvement of Indonesian Konjac Chips (Amorphophallus Muelleri Blume) through Drying Methods and Sodium Metabisulphite Soaking

Kisroh Dwiyono,Maman A Djauhari

doi:10.5539/mas.v13n9p107

Abstract

Amorphophallus muelleri Blume (Indonesian konjac) is an annual herbaceous wild plant growing in Indonesia. It produces glucomannan, i.e., a polysaccharide hydrocolloid compound that has many benefits in various fields of industry and has high economic value. To obtain this compound, Indonesian konjac tuber has to be processed into chips, ground, and separated from the other components such as fiber and starch. The problem encountered in producing glucomannan is to find a drying method which may optimally decrease the water content in chips with higher drying rate to produce good quality of the chips. This paper proposes a drying method and to study its effect on the quality of Indonesian konjac chips. For this purpose, we consider these two main treatments; (i) soaking in sodium metabisulphite solution in pre-drying process, and (ii) drying using oven and direct sun light. Thus, we work with four combinations of treatments and then we compare the effect of each combination on the quality characteristics of the chips. The experiment shows that the combination of oven drying method and soaking method produces the best results. In this experiment, we use 1500 ppm of that solution and 10 minutes of soaking. According to our knowledge, these is an unprecedented experiment and thus the results will hopefully be a significant contribution to the literature of food engineering.

Highlights

Indonesian konjac (IK, in brief) is a tuber crops from Araceae family and monocotyledoneae class
The second objective is to increase the whiteness of the chips, we use a new soaking treatment which consists of 1500 ppm sodium metabisulphite solution during 15 minutes followed by washing and drying process
In this paragraph we report the characteristics of IK dried chips produced by local farmers (SD) and those produced from laboratory experiment (OD)

Summary

Introduction

Indonesian konjac (IK, in brief) is a tuber crops from Araceae family and monocotyledoneae class. Its domestication (Figure 1B) can be found in Java where it is widely grown by farmers in the surrounding forest and their yards This plant produces tubers (Figure 1C) containing glucomannan which has many benefits in various industries such as food industry (e.g., shirataki and konyaku) and pharmaceutical industry (e.g., medication for diabetes mellitus, cancer, and cholesterol). Many other benefits, such as Wardhani, et al (2017) and Zhang, et al (2010) have remarked, are to strengthening woven textile, media for microbe cultures, and edible film. The details of these methods will be the main discussion in this paper

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion