Design of the improved evaporative cooling structure for storage of tomatoes in morogoro
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Date
2022
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Sokoine university of agriculture
Abstract
In most developing countries, smallholder farmers face several challenges while
embarking on their farming for agriculture crop production. The challenges are serious
during post-harvesting processes. The phenomenon is evident in sub-Saharan countries,
Tanzania inclusive. Tanzania’s economy is agriculturally based which contributes 26.7%
of its GDP and it employs over 80% of the population. As such any efforts geared to
eradicate poverty and improve livelihoods should focus on the agriculture (horticulture
subsector) which is characterized by small scale subsistent farming, low productivity, and
huge post-harvest losses. These huge losses can be attributed to a lack of appropriate post-
harvest processing techniques, low awareness, on the part of good harvesting and
packaging practices or techniques and lack of storage facilities. Morogoro smallholder
farmers of tomatoes are not spared from this phenomenon. Several storage technologies
for curbing tomato post-harvest losses have been introduced to smallholder farmers.
Some technologies have shown promising results. However, more investigation of the
technology’s effectiveness is needed.
This study aimed to design an evaporative cooling structure for the storage of tomatoes. A
need assessment survey was conducted to help generate information on tomato handling
practices and losses for small scale farmers and retailers in six selected areas in the
Morogoro region. Sixty respondents with at least 3 years of farming or retailing tomatoes
were purposively selected through the help of the extension officer and market leaders to
represent part of the tomatoes’ handling chain. The findings obtained showed that farmers
were not using any storage facilities for tomatoes while retailers used inferior handling
facilities and some did not use any storage facilities, ultimately losing most of their
tomatoes. This study found that tomato post-harvest losses (PHLs) were 29.7% at the
farmers’ level and 18.4% at the small scale retailers’ level during handling and marketing. The majority of the respondents showed a desire to possess evaporative coolers to reduce
tomato PHLs. In this context, the improved wind operated passive evaporative cooling
(IWOPEC) storage structure for tomatoes was designed and fabricated, and its
performance was evaluated against other storage conditions. A randomized complete
block design (RCBD) was used. The storage environment conditions considered were
ambient (AT), cold room (CR), and IWOPEC structure. The results on the effects of
temperature and relative humidity (RH) were significantly different (p<0.05) under the
studied storage environments. Total soluble solids and percentage weight loss
significantly increased (p<0.05) for all studied environmental conditions, whereas
firmness and titratable acid significantly decreased (p<0.05) in response to storage time
and environmental conditions. The IWOPEC structure reduced temperature, increased RH
and gave peak and daily average cooling efficiency of 84.89% and 61.67%, respectively.
The result of the benefit-cost ratio (BCR) was 2.51 shows using the IWOPEC structure
for the storage of fresh ripened tomatoes is viable. In areas with high PHLs under AT,
using the IWOPEC structure to improve the shelf life of tomatoes is economically
feasible. Improvement of the IWOPEC structure by having water boot sump and a water
pump to increase the cooling efficiency of the storage atmosphere is recommended.
Description
Dissertation
Keywords
Design, Improved evaporative, Cooling structure, Tomatoes, Morogoro