DETERIORATION OF CELOSIA (Celosea argentea) AND PEPPER (Capsicum frutescens) IN A METAL –IN – WALL EVAPORATIVE COOLER

Abstract

Due to the high rate of deterioration of fruits and vegetables particularly after harvesting in Nigeria, there
is need for the development of an efficient storage structure for such highly perishable products. A metal
in wall evaporative cooler was evaluated using fresh pepper and celosia to ascertain the optimum period
that they could be stored without losing their essential nutritive values. The metal-bin walled evaporative
cooling system consists of a brick wall, a cooling chamber (metallic box) and a coarse sand which act as
the evaporating medium. The study revealed that there were continuous decrease in the food quality
parameters such as ash content from 2.95% to 1.83% for celosia and 1.03% to 0.17% for pepper, fat
content decreased from 1.80% to 1.04% for celosia and 1.14% to 0.89% for pepper, carbohydrate content
decreased from 4.06% to 0.03% for celosia and 7.88% to 3.66% for pepper, protein content decreased
from 4.77% to 4.51% for celosia and 2.61% to 2.05 for pepper and fibre content decreased from 2.73% to
2.49% for celosia and 1.09% to 0.80% for pepper, while the value of moisture content increased from
83.69% to 90.10% for celosia and 86.25% to 92.43% for pepper with increase in storage days. It was
discovered that the cooling chamber had an average temperature drop of about 7° C when compared the
ambient temperature and an average relative humidity drop of about 4% was experienced throughout the
period of the study. The maximum storage days of celosia inside the cooler was 7 days while that of
pepper inside the cooler was 10 days for both of them to retain their optimal nutritive value.