The Raised Open Solar Rack Dried Sardines Biochemical and Nutritional Quality off Kenyan Coast
Keywords:
biochemical, nutritional, raised rack dryers, sardinesAbstract
The small-scale fisheries (SSFs) account for more than half of the world’s total fish production in terms of being major sources of food fish, income and employment to millions of people especially in developing countries. However, they also face high levels of post-harvest fishery losses (PHFLs) that equate to loss of valuable animal protein for the consumers and contributing to food insecurity, lost income to fishers, processors and traders amongst other challenges. In south coast of Kenya at Jasini-Vanga, approximately 65 tonnes of Sardine fish has been
seasonally lost as a result of using the convectional traditional drying methods of spreading on sandy seashores, mats or tarpaulins. These improper and unscientific traditional drying methods have serious health hazards to the product consumers by compromising the biochemical and microbiological quality of the processed products. Therefore, in order to overcome this traditional sun drying drawbacks, Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute introduced the open raised rack method for Sardine drying. An investigation was therefore carried out to assess the system performance in terms of sardine drying rates, biochemical and nutritional quality attributes. The quality attributes were assessed by determining proximate composition, yeast, mold and bacterial counts, peroxide value and color L, a, b values. The results
indicated significant variations in the drying rates and quality attributes compared to the convectional traditional drying methods.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Bernard O. Ogongo , Peter M. O. Odote

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.