Quality assessment of dried-bean with biochemical parameters

This work reports the quality assessment study of beans preserved through batch dehydration introducing tempering cycles and a control without them. The parameters considered were viability, germination, lipoxygenase activity, and digestibility percentages, as well as changes in the molecular weights of the albumin and globulin protein fractions. Since a similar final humidity content was reached, it can be considered that from the bean dehydration treatments, those with batch tempering cycles always resulted better compared to those without the application of tempering periods. The viability, germination, and lipoxygenase activity tests showed lower values compared to a control sample in all cases; however, these indexes were even lower when the sample was dried without the application of tempering cycles. The effect of the drying process with and without tempering cycles on digestibility showed a slight increase in this parameter compared to the control sample. The effect of the different drying treatments on protein molecular weights showed that, when the process temperature was higher, molecular aggregates were apparently present with weights similar to those in the control sample. From the treatments with tempering cycles, the best scheme was at 70degreesC and 5 drying time x 30 tempering time periods.