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Impact of Fermentation Duration on the Quality of Malaysian Cocoa Beans Using Shallow Box

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Khairul Bariah, S

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Standard fermentation of cocoa in Malaysia is five days using shallow box fermentation. This duration is considered long to farmers as they have to allow the beans to dry for another three to seven days before they can sell it. This study was conducted to evaluate the impact of the fermentation duration using shallow box on the quality of the Malaysian cocoa beans. Fermentation was done at the Cocoa Research Centre, Hilir Perak with capacity of 150 kg. During fermentation, the mass temperature and pH of the wet beans was taken for every 24 hours. Three subsamples of about 30 kg of the fermented beans were taken randomly at the end of the Day-3, Day-4 and Day-5 of fermentation and sun-dried at one bean thickness layer. The quality of dried beans produced was assessed using cut test, fermentation index and pH of cotyledon analysis. Cut test analysis indicated the percentage of fully brown beans increased from 62% to 82%. Similar increasing trend was observed for the fermentation index (FI). Cocoa fermented for five days had FI value of 1.41, 1.27 for four days and 1.21 for three days, respectively but there was no significant difference in acidity of dried beans samples. Thus, this might suggest fermentation of Malaysian cocoa beans in shallow box fermentation could be shortened to three days. Organoleptic analysis will be carried out to assess if the flavour attribute of beans produced in three days fermentation is significantly different.

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Fermentation, duration, shallow box, cocoa beans, physical quality