Development of shade-dried banana (musa sp.) powder

Cavendish banana fruits at different stages of maturity (unripe (Green), half ripe, and fully ripped) were collected from the local market, Khartoum north - Sudan during 2010 season. Banana fruits were washed, peeled, cut into slices form, and then treated with lemon juice of 2.5 % T.S.S concentration prior to drying. Triplicates trials for each stage has been processed. The fruit components, overall dry ratio, dry ratio and peeling loss, were estimated. Banana fresh fruits were found to contain 520/0, 41.70/0 and 36.6% peels, 48%, 58.0% and 63.1 % of pulp for unripe, half ripe, and full ripe banana fruits respectively. On the other hand overall drying ratio was 9.2:1, 7.7:1 and 7.3:1, the drying ratio 3.9: 1, 4.6: 1 and 4.8: 1, the peeling loss 48%, 41% and 36.7 % for un-ripe, half ripe, and full ripe fruits respectively. Physiochemical properties of the fresh different banana maturity stages and the produced powder such as moisture content, ascorbic acid, titrable acidity, total sugars, reducing sugars, total soluble solids, colour intensity, protein content, fibre, ash content and mineral content were determined. It was found that banana pulps of different maturity stages retained their quality though the contents of the mentioned constituents were found to be lesser in the produced powder. Reconstitution characteristics of the processed powder such as wettability and sinkability, flowability, bulk density, solubility rate were also determined. On comparing the results of banana powder reconstitutions properties of different stages, it was found that the un- ripe fruit powder is better in wettability and sinkability (750, 2 /sec) than the half ripe and full ripe powder (800, 4/950, 5 sec respectively), the solubility rate of the ripe fruit powder was (600/sec), while of un ripe and half ripe banana fruit powder (820,680 /sec respectively).This indicates that is the best in solubility is the full ripe produced banana powder. The fact is that; as a powder bulk density decreased a powder is known to have an excellent flowing properties .Since the ripe banana powder have the lowest bulk density (0.70) than the half ripe (0.90), and un ripe (1.05), this indicates that the full ripe have the best flowability (39 deg) than the half ripe (45 deg) and un ripe powder (45 deg ). The results of microbial tests of the developed banana powder revealed that samples are acceptable, hence the powder have an excellent quality attributes which cope with using it as a food supplement. It was concluded that banana powder of different maturity stages could be used as enrich stuff and an excellent improved supplement of diet