Division of Quality of Plant Products
Abteilung Qualität pflanzlicher Erzeugnisse
 

Research Project FruVaSe
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Ganzjährige Verfügbarkeit von Obst und Gemüse: Ressourceneffiziente Verarbeitung und neue Vermarktungsmöglichkeiten als Instrument zur Förderung der ländlichen Entwicklung in Sub-Sahara Afrika
 

News

2^nd FruVaSe Workshop from 16th to 18th September 2019 at Georg August University Göttingen, Germany

During our second project workshop – directly before the Tropentag conference in Kassel, which we attended afterwards together – field work highlights from each country and each work package were presented and challenges, possible amendments and way forward was discussed.
For each target fruit and vegetable at least one or more products have been developed or are under development. These products are:

• All fruit and vegetable products will be assessed for their nutritional value before and after processing and shelf-life stability will be tested. Focus will be on vitamins A (beta-carotene), B9 (folic acid), C, phenolic compounds and minerals such as iron and zinc among others.

• Different processing techniques are currently tested such as cooking at different temperatures, fermentation, drying at different temperatures and various drying techniques namely open sun drying, solar drying, hot air drying and refractance window drying (RWD).

• Energy and water needs for the processing of each product is collected to analyse the needs and possibly improve the processes.

• The willingness to pay for the new products will be tested with consumers in the research areas in each country.

For the FruVaSe kick-off workshop at Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology (NM-AIST), Arusha, Tanzania, participants from every partner University were present to first get to know each other and introduce and discuss the five work packages of the project. We agreed on the research regions in each country, which will be one for the selected fruit and one for the selected vegetable.

Our target fruits and vegetables are:

 A total of 10 PhD students and 10 MSc students are now working on their proposals to start with the field work in 2019. The focus will be on

• determining the current usage, processing techniques, demands, possible constraints in processing and preservation etc. of the target fruits and vegetables through a baseline survey (all WPs).

• processing techniques to be tested and evaluated regarding the nutrient content of the final products (WP3) and the energy needed for processing and which sources of energy are available (WP4).

• consumer surveys to be applied for testing consumers attitude towards taste, packaging, price etc. of the final products (WP5).