IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF COCOA BEANS (THEOBROMA CACAO L.) WITH THE ADDITION OF STRAWBERRY POWDER (FRAGARIA SP.) IN SECONDARY FERMENTATION

• Main Author: Oktavia, Affdila
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Teknologi
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/67861
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Cocoa is a commodity from plantations in Indonesia that has an important role as one of the country's foreign exchange earners. One of the cocoa-producing areas in Indonesia is North Lombok Regency, West Nusa Tenggara. However, the high production is not comparable to the quality of the quality cocoa beans produced. The fermentation that is usually done by farmers is natural fermentation that utilizes indigenous microbes and endogenous activities of cocoa beans without controlling the temperature, pH, and fermentation media. So that the resulting cocoa beans have unstable quality and taste, aroma, and quality are not uniform. This is undesirable in the cocoa industry. One of the ways to improve the quality of cocoa beans is through secondary fermentation. Secondary fermentation is the second fermentation carried out after primary fermentation to improve the quality of cocoa beans. This fermentation can be done with the addition of other substrates such as exogenous microbes and certain compounds such as strawberry powder containing aromatic compounds. The addition of strawberry powder aims to bring out new flavors and aromas in cocoa beans. Thus, the purpose of this study was to optimize the amount of inoculum and the addition of strawberry powder in secondary fermentation and to determine the best total phenol content. Secondary fermentation was carried out by adding 5%(w/w) strawberry powder and starter culture of yeast and lactic acid bacteria (LAB) 1:1 with various inoculum concentrations of 5%, 10%, and 15% (v/w), cell density 10? CFU/mL which lasted for 8 hours at a temperature of ±28°C and was stirred every 2 hours, using 500gram cocoa beans and a plastic fermentation container. The results showed that the addition of 5% (w/w) strawberry powder and starter culture of yeast and lactic acid bacteria (LAB) 1:1 with variations in inoculum concentration of 10% (v/w), cell density of 10? CFU/mL gave good results. optimum with 100% fermentation index value, 4.36% moisture content, the number of beans per 100 grams belongs to group AA, different and slightly preferable to grade C cocoa powder and almost the same as grade A cocoa powder, with the highest strawberry flavor, after 8 hours of secondary fermentation. The addition of 15% (v/w) inoculum concentration variations resulted in the highest total phenol and antioxidant activity, namely 131,355 mg GAE/g and an IC50 of 47,571.