Objective
Raisins are traditionally a sundried product. The sultana raisins produced in Greece and the Middle East are treated with caustic soda and sulphur dioxide for better drying and to give them a light colour. Artificial drying has failed to give the desired results. In the USA 97% of raisins produced are processed by sun drying.
5 different sun driers were designed and constructed to determine the best natural drying conditions with respect to rate of drying and product quality. The tests took into account the quality of the raw material (ripeness and water content) and the environmental conditions (temperature, humidity and air velocity). A second approach to improve drying involved the modification and use of artificial dryers as well as combinations of natural and artificial drying. The results showed that drying can be controlled and regulated satisfactorily and that both temperature and pretreatment of the grapes are important. Combinations of natural and artificial drying seem to be promising. Measurements were made of traits such as water absorption, texture, friction coefficient, stickiness and colour in order to gauge the best processing conditions and product quality. Experiments were initiated to produce raisins with lower sugar content as were studies of novel food products containing raisins.
Raisins are traditionally a sun-dried product. There are two main types of raisins : the light coloured "Sultanas" (corresponding to the Thomson seedless raisins/USA) and the dark coloured "Korinthen" or currants. The Sultana- type raisins, produced in Greece and Middle East countries (Afganistan, Iran, Turkey) are mostly treated with caustic soda and SO2 for better drying and to give them a light color. Experiments on artificial drying failed to give the expected results and even in the USA 97 % of raisins produced are still processed by sun drying.
Developments in production, trade and consumption make it necessary to revise the whole production, handling and processing system to enhance the quality of the product and its market position. The present project includes :
a) enhancing the product quality and efficiency of postharvest operations;
b) reorganization of handling and storage systems;
c) enhancing the efficiency of processing operations involved after sun drying and before storage;
d) increasing the sales and the number of existing raisin-containing products.
The experiments will include investigations from harvesting up to the marketing of final products, in particular :
- measurement of the physical properties,
- drying experiments to accelerate sun drying; tests of combined sun and artificial drying,
- development of methods leading to a better quality control of raisins,
- novel possibilities in the storage of pre-processed raisins.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Coordinator
11855 ATHINAI
Greece
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