Determinación de la correlación porcentaje de grasa con el color de las almendras fermentadas y secas de cacao.

Abstract

Cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) is one of the most important crops at the national level, since within the country it has generated income and provided jobs directly and indirectly to several families, in addition to the fact that this crop generates good production, it stands out on the country's economy. It is known that the cocoa crop has good attributes such as aroma, flavor and quality, cocoa beans contain chemical compounds which are: fats, nitrogenous matter, water, in addition to physical properties such as moisture. Cocoa fat or also called cocoa butter changes according to the variety, in addition to the concentration of fat, the acidity index and fatty acids is related to the time of harvest, it is considered that the fat content is between 48 and 55%. This research was carried out at the Santa Inés Farm of the Technical University of Machala with National type cocoa from the same place. The objective of this work was to implement a color-based method to determine the percentage of fat in cocoa beans. The work was developed with fifty accessions of cocoa, as a first instance is distinguished directly the degrees of maturity, which are 5 degrees, the accessions were harvested from which a grouping was made according to moisture, it is known that the percentage of efficient moisture for cocoa should be between 7% and 8%, for this measure was used the SAMAP -o- TEST H40 equipment, which are taken directly from the cocoa bean; To determine the color of the cocoa powder, ten seeds of each accession were ground at random, from which a small sample was taken to find similarity with the colors of the Munsell table, and from this the code of the same table was taken; to determine the percentage of cocoa fat, the cocoa powder was taken, and the ethanol reagent was used as a solvent to separate the fat particles from the cocoa samples. The data were analyzed in the statistical program SPSS version 25, using tables of descriptive statistics, Tukey tests with a significance level of 0.05%. Physical variables such as: the scale of maturity of the cob, color of the cotyledon, shape of the seed, shape of the cross section, length, diameter, thickness, Brix degrees of the seed, percentage of moisture and color of the cocoa powder, were measured directly in the field, while the analysis of the percentage of fat in the bean was carried out in the Chemistry laboratory of the Technical University of Machala. The results showed that; In the interaction between the percentage of moisture in the bean and the maturity scale of the cob, there was variance in a minimum proportion to the variables analyzed, according to the highest percentage of fat, whose maturity scale obtained a grade of 6, there was no variation with respect to the color of the cocoa powder, with a percentage of 52.84%, with a minimum amount of significant difference and with a color coding of 3/4 10R, and with respect to the accession that had the lowest percentage of fat, with a maturity scale of grade 3, it was demonstrated that there is no variation, obtaining 50.80% of fat, represented by the color 4/6 5YR. In addition, it was shown that the correlation level was 0.088 being denominated as low positive between the fat percentage and the color of cocoa powder. It is concluded that there is no low correlation between color and fat percentage, also a scale was made where the percentage of each accession investigated is detailed, along with the color that was obtained from the cocoa powder, this is of great importance because it leads to producers to benefit at the time of harvesting.