Browsing by Author "Bandara, S. M. I. P. G."

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    Development of a Tea Incorporated Instant Soup Cube
    (Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka, 2013) Konara, P.C.; Bandara, S. M. I. P. G.; Rathnayake, R.M.C.W.M.; Samaranayaka, H.
    Instant soups are a new group of dried foods which play an important role in the nutrition of people because theyfulfill present and future social consumer requirements (Ayto, 2002). Next to water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world (Macfarlane, 2004). Tea contains many chemical compounds that are good for health (Owen et al., 2008). This research was an effort to develop a tea incorporated instant soup cube as a tea based new value added product to compatible with the modern consumer needs. Specific objectives are to determine the appropriate amount and type of tea powder to be incorporated into the soup mixture, to determine some important physicochemical parameters of the newly developed product and microbial analysis and to compare the different aspects of the tea soup cube and a tea cup made with dust. Methodology Referring to the literature and the earlier trials on different ingredients ratios, six basic recipes were developed for the instant soup mixture. Among those, the best recipe was selected based on the consumer preference on overall acceptability of fifty individuals. Two tea standards wer e developed for Green Tea and Black Tea separately using dust grades to incorporate into the soup mixture. The range of quantity to be incorporated into the soup mixture was determined thorough preliminary trials. Five treatments were prepared by incorporating various quantities of tea and soup mixture as shown in Table 1.A mould was prepared to produce homogeneous soup cubes of equal weight (4 g).
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    Studies on copra drying for white coconut oil production
    (Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka, 2015) Wijedasa, N. K. W.; Chandrasena, G.; Bandara, S. M. I. P. G.; Silva, S.
    Currently, copra is produced at a relatively small scale using a traditional process which involves a high degree of manual labour. Copra production relatively takes longer time to dry and it is a time consuming process. Sri Lanka, as a copra exporter in the world, it is needed to find out new copra production methods, which give relatively high quality copra in order to produce high quality coconut oil. Therefore it is needed to conduct studies on higher scale production process which is more cost-effective than the current process, and which will give a consistently high quality milling copra. This is to evaluate the effect of de-shelling on the copra drying process compared to previously conducted trials. Therefore de-shelled coconut kernel is to dry in an indirect heated copra dryer in Pannala area which is belong to Adamjee Lukmanjee & Sons (Pvt) Ltd and to obtain good quality product and evaluating the product via standard quality parameters. Methodology Drying experiments were carried out at Adamjee Lukmanjee & Sons (Pvt) Ltd. laboratory and the hot air dryer located at the Pannala area which belongs to Adamjee Lukmanjee & Sons (Pvt) Ltd. The research work was done as two parts. First laboratory scale experiment was done to produce de-shelled copra and the next step was to do a trial run in large scale. In the current study, coconut nuts were de-shelled and separated into three sizes as the cup size, half of the cup and quarter of the cup as three replicates of each treatment. Normal cup size copra was used as the reference. Drying time which takes to remove moisture content upto 6% from the coconut kernel was recorded in each treatment. Then quality parameters of each treatment were evaluated to obtain good quality copra product through the process of drying the de-shelled coconut nuts. These properties such as: Total plate count (TPC), Yeast and mould (Y&M) and Free fatty acid (FFA) content of de-shelled copra was measured by keeping one month period of time under typical storage facilities. Free Fatty Acid levels in each replicates were measured for chemical analysis. Trial was conducted using 10,000 coconut nuts to prepare de-shelled copra. All experimental data with three replicates were analysed with one way ANOVA using Minitab 16 statistical software. All comparisons were based on a 95% confidence interval. Mean comparison was done using Tukey test. Results and Discussion According to the drying time evaluation, there is a significant difference (P < 0.05) with the control sample. Cup copra with the shell gives the highest time to dry out the kernel to 6 % moisture. Free fatty acid content in the de-shelled copra is higher than the reference. This can be due do the removal of the shell. But FFA is at the required level of standard milling copra used to make oil. Total plate count is lower in control treatment. It can be noted that highest TPC resulted in the cup copra without shell. This can be due to the external factors affect during the