PHYSICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF COCOA SEEDS (Theobroma cacao L.) IN THE NORTH BRAZILIAN REGION

Abstract

Cacao is a perennial crop of great economic value in the northern region of Brazil, but it presents storage
and drying difficulties that maintain the quality of the final product. The objective of the present study was to evaluate
an equipment to measure the angle of rest of the grain and to analyze the seeds of the cacao tree (Theobroma cacao L.),
showing its physical characteristics rest angle, unit volume, porosity and sphericity, with the purpose of collaborating
with future studies of sizing of silos, dryers and conveyor belts. The work was conducted in the municipality of Tomé-
Açu with the construction of a prototype and subsequent comparison to another already established with 10 repetitions,
the sphericity was performed with the orthogonal axes of 15 seeds, the unit volume considered the volume of a triaxial
ellipsoid with 15 replicates, grain mass porosity was determined by the direct method by insertion of a vegetable oil
fluid into a known mass. The results were submitted to the mean (T) test with p-value <0.05 of significance. With the
results obtained it was observed that the prototype produced was successful compared to the established one, with angle
of rest less than 35 ° demonstrating the seeds of the cocoa as of free flow. As for sphericity, the values ranged from
15.75 to 35.16%, being impossible to classify them as spherical, for unit volume ranged from 1.24 to 4.25 cm³, the
specific unit mass from 1.06 to 1.15 g / cm³ and the apparent specific mass of 0.48 to 0.53 g / cm³, admitting varying
porosity between 0.53 to 0.56. Thus, the data obtained in the work corroborate with future studies of sizing,
improvement and projection of silos, dryers and conveyor belts.