Assessing Preservation of Tomato with the Use of Microwave Radiation

Abstract

Postharvest losses of vegetables can occur at any point from harvest through collection and distribution to the final consumer. Thus, preservation is important for all stake holders involved from planting till consumption of these vegetables. There is therefore the need to look into the use of common methods including home appliances to increase the shelf-life of these produce. Research was conducted to investigate the use of microwave radiation from the kitchen microwave oven for the preservation of fruits using tomato as the test crop. The experiment was conducted inside the Laboratory of Agronomy department, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology LAUTECH, Ogbomoso Oyo state, Nigeria. Tomato fruits were harvested from the teaching and research farm of LAUTECH at maturity stage, and batched into (four) 4 groups of ten (10) tomatoes each then labelled (B 1 , B 2 , B 3 and B o – control).  The B 1 , B 2 , and B 3 tomatoes were radiated using the kitchen microwave oven for 5, 10 and 15minutes at three microwave power levels of low (9.3GHz), med-low (9.5GHz) and high (10.0GHz) frequency. The samples were monitored under room temperature for ripening for 5weeks.The result shows that only 20% out of the radiated tomatoes at low frequency of 9.3GHz for 15minutes were ripened by the 5 th week while B o tomatoes were all ripened and spoilt by the 3 rd week of observation. It is therefore recommended that tomato fruits can be preserved best at a recommended frequency of 9.3GHz for 15minutes. Keywords: postharvest losses, Electro-magnetic radiation (EMR), tomato preservation, kitchen microwave oven, DOI : 10.7176/ALST/76-05 Publication date :September 30 th 2019