Forma e tamanho dos grãos de feijão mungo (Vigna radiata l. r. Wilczek) durante a secagem

Abstract

Mung bean is a grain legume well known by people who of Asian food. In Brazil, its production is on seed production, with a focus on the production of sprouts for food. The handling of seeds, from planting, harvesting to post-harvest, is dependent on the physical properties that they present, which in turn do not present predefined standards, their characteristics suffer variations due to certain processes, such as drying, which involves removing excess water from the product, resulting in significant changes in its form and size. Thus, the objective of this work is to determine and evaluate the form and size behavior of mung bean during drying. The grains were harvested with initial moisture content of 27% (wet weight basis, wb), and subsequently subjected to artificial drying with natural ventilation, until they reached a moisture content of approximately 9% (wb). Throughout the drying process, the form and size of the grains were evaluated by determining the orthogonal axes, length, width and thickness. With these data, circularity, sphericity, volume, surface area, projected area and surface-volume ratio were calculated. During drying, the dimensions of the orthogonal axes reduce and consequently there is a reduction in volume. Projected area, surface area and geometric diameter also decrease with water content, while circularity and surface-to-volume ratio increase. The sphericity of the grain also gets bigger and bigger as drying takes place.