Scientific African (Jul 2021)
A review of raw plantain size reduction
Abstract
Size reduction is very fundamental and crucial to (and enhances subsequent operations in) postharvest processing of raw plantain into storable and value-added products. In Nigeria, research into mechanized processing of raw plantain is mainly driven by plantain’s health benefits, medicinal values, economic values and industrial applications. Thus, demand for plantain and its associated products is rapidly increasing, and needs to be met. Plantain, due to its perishable nature, is usually processed into easy-to-transport, value-added and storable products in order to mitigate its alarming postharvest losses so that it will be readily available all the year round. Being a critical unit process, size reduction role in raw plantain processing can never be overemphasized. There is a need to review, in order to optimize, this unit process as a part of mitigating postharvest food losses, food insecurity and instability of food prices in Africa, particularly in Nigeria. Chronicled is the review of researchers’ works on raw plantain size reduction techniques while processing it into chips, flour and other products. It was observed that the reviewed size reducers’ speeds, efficiencies, throughput capacities, percentage of lost materials, and percentage of damaged or out-of-standard materials ranged from 39 to 500 rpm, 36.38% to 98.1%, 20.96 to 1319 kg/h, 1.05% to 47.7%, and 4.37% to 33.78% respectively. Enumerated, are some factors and properties influencing the design of raw plantain size reducers. Basic components of a typical raw plantain size reducer, procedures for developing raw plantain size reducers and some recommendations for further works/research gaps are also presented. Observed and justified, is the need to make size reducers reconfigurable/flexible. A critical look at all the reviewed size reducers shows that some could be merged/modified to produce reconfigurable domestic, commercial or industrial size reducers that would be able to serve in plants that process raw plantain and other crops into chips and flour among other products.
