INFLUENCE OF THE PROCESSING STEPS ON CASHEW NUT QUALITY

Abstract

Cashew nuts have high nutritional value. This nut provides
macronutrients, micronutrients and a large variety of antioxidants,
such as phenolic compounds. There are losses in some compounds
during the processing of fruits and there are very few studies on
this aspect. Given the above, this research aimed to determine the
eff ect of the processing steps on cashew nut characteristics with
emphasis on total antioxidant activity. Signifi cant diff erences were
observed between the processing steps for all the chemical and
physical-chemical characteristics studied. Cashew nuts contained
high levels of lipids and energy, low content of moisture and water
activity and medium content of phenolic compounds (51.33 GAE/100
g) and antioxidant activity by the ABTS•+ radical (6.49 μM Trolox/g)
at the end of the process. Regarding the total antioxidant activity,
it was observed that the ABTS•+ radical method can be considered
appropriate to measure the antioxidant activity of cashew nuts, since
the results presented lower coeffi cients of variation and express
proportionate results to other methods.