Artificial drying of cocoa beams using a tray dryer / Siti Saziah Ahmad

Cocoa is our fourth major comodity crops. The
development of agriculture technology has been improved
the variety of cocoa and increased production. It is
available for commercial planting because the time taken
for cocoa ' to be mature and suitable to harvest is
shotter and the quality is better. Perak, Selangor and
Sabah are the three major states which produce cocoa
beans for Malaysia.
Research on the artificial drying of cocoa beans
using hot air flow rate technique which uses tray dryer
is done to determine the drying rate of cocoa beans and
this is for helping the smal1 holders to dry their cocoa
beans when the weather is not allowed to dry the beans
under the sun.
From the results of this reseach, we are able to
find out that in the artificial drying of cocoa beans,
the temperature and the hot air flow rate must have a
certain limit or optimum conditions so that the beans
will dry quickly without affecting the beans, also to
prevent the development of moulds and to avoid the beans
to be very brittle before they are marketed.