PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF PEANUT FRUITS DURING DRYING

ABSTRACT: The present work was accomplished with the objective of evaluating the drying effect on the peanut fruits physical properties. Peanut fruits with an initial moisture content of 0.63 decimal db were dried with a temperature of 40 ºC. Bulk density, true density, porosity, thousand-grain weight, sphericity, circularity, projected area, surface area and surface/volume ratio physical properties were determined. Based on these results, it is concluded that reducing the moisture content promotes reduction in all the physical properties of peanut fruits, except the surface/volume ratio that have their values increased with the moisture content reduction. The circularity as sphericity of the peanut fruit values was reduced during the drying process.