James Banda¹ , Mangani Katundu² , Levison Chiwaula² , Geoffrey Kanyerere¹ , Maxon Ngochera¹ , Kings Kamtambe¹

1 Research Officer, Fisheries Research Unit, P.O. Box 27, Monkey Bay, Malawi
2 Chancellor College, P.O Box 280 Zomba, University of Malawi, Malawi
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Marine Science, 2017, Vol. 7, No. 11   doi: 10.5376/ijms.2017.07.0011
Received: 24 Mar., 2017    Accepted: 19 Apr., 2017    Published: 01 May, 2017

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Banda J., Katundu M., Chiwaula L., Kanyerere G., Ngochera M., and Kamtambe K., 2017, Nutritional, microbial and sensory quality of solar tent dried (Samva Nyengo) and open sun dried Copadichromis virginalis-Utaka (Pisces; Cichlidae), International Journal of Marine Science, 7(11): 96-101 (doi: 10.5376/ijms.2017.07.0011)

A comparative analysis of solar tent drying (Samva Nyengo) and open sun drying were evaluated for their effectiveness on quality of Copadichromis virginalis on nutritional content, microbial load and sensory quality. Solar tent dried and open sun dried Copadichromis virginalis contained 62.89±0.05% and 62.73±0.096% of crude protein, 23.24±0.66% and 23.41±0.59% of fat, 7.22±0.021% and 16.31±0.36% of moisture 14.48±1.08% and 21.97±0.36% of ash respectively. Moisture and ash were significant difference (p = 0.001), crude protein and crude fat showed a non-significant difference (p = 0.05). Open sun dried had significantly higher bacteria load (4.1×10⁵ CFU/g) (0.001) than solar tent dried fish (2.2×10² CFU/g). Isolated bacteria from solar tent dried and open sun dried fish were 1.2×10¹ and 5.0 ×10³ for Total coliform, 0 and 1.0 × 10⁴ for Escherishia coli, 0 and 6.1 × 10³ for Salmonella, 0 and 3.8 ×10³ for Shigella, 5.9×10² and 5.1×10⁴ for Psuedomonas. Panellist had high preference for solar tent dried than open sun dried fish confirmed by scores for overall acceptability which were high at 3.8 and 2.2 respectively. The results reveal a possible application of solar tent drying as a SMART proven and emerging technology for fish processing in Malawi. It has proved that use of solar tent drying would support fish processors to produce quality dried fish with good nutritive value, reduced microbial contamination, and consumer acceptability that will be central to food security of the country.

Copadichromis virginalis; Quality; Open sun drying; Solar tent drying; Lake Malawi