Obtaining Food Flours through the Drying of Tamarind Fruits

Tamarind is a fruit of foreign origin, more precisely African, but it has an excellent adaptation to the different types of climatic conditions in other continents. In Brazil, for example, it is possible to find it in several states. Although tamarind has a considerable yield on both its constituent parts, shell, pulp and seeds, and have a low purchasing power, the fruit is largely wasted and there are few in-depth studies on the same. As a way of reuse, the aim was to transform the fruit into new products, such as flours used in human food. The objective of this study was to make the drying of the tamarind fruits to obtain the ideal characteristics for the development of a food flour and to evaluate the physical-chemical quality and to determine the bioactive compounds of the tamarind flour. Drying was done at 60 °C in a greenhouse, during different drying periods, which varied according to each part of the fruit, after which the flours were elaborated and characterized for the physicochemical and bioactive parameters. In the physico-chemical characterization, a good presence of proteins in the seed flour (7.09%), low sugar content in the pulp flour (0.74%), good values for lipids in the seed flour (3, 41%) and good ash values in the bark flour (2.69%). In general, the flour besides proteins had a good source of energy and minerals. Among the bioactive compounds present in the tamarind flour were the high contents of phenolic compounds (1564.9 mg/100g), vitamin C (80.95%), lycopene (89.62 mg/g), flavonoids (20.44 mg/100g) and anthocyanins (12.84mg / 10g) in the seed flour, carotenoids (20.80 mg/g) in the pulp flour. In general, flours produced from tamarind had excellent characteristics for the preparation of bakery products.