This work is part of a rescue project for unconventional vegetables, developed at the Federal Technological University of Paraná (UTFPR) - Pato Branco Campus, by the Chemistry Course in partnership with the Department of Agronomy. Unconventional vegetables are plant species of limited distribution, belonging to the crop of certain regions. These vegetables had their consumption handicapped with the passage of the years, mainly due to the establishment of life habits based on practicality, resulted from increasing consumption of industrialized products [1]. These plants also present great potential in popular medicine, however, there are still countless reports in the scientific literature, generating a promising niche for research. The objective of this study is to evaluate the composition of the in natura tubercle, produced in the Southwest of Paraná, through physical-chemical tests, as well as drying curve, with later comparison to the logarithmic and Lewis models. After analyzing the models, it was determined that both can be used, as the values of the determination coefficients are higher than 0.98, with a better adaptation to the logarithmic model. Regarding the physical-chemical characterization, the results are shown in table 1. Table 1: Results of the analyzed physical-chemical parameters. (Own authorship)
For moisture content on wet basis (% Mw), we found a similar result to that of Shajeela et al., (2011) [2], 86.70% ± 0.23. In the value found for lipids, similar results are observed in the literature, 0.10 mg 100 g-1 obtained by Vilpoux et al. (2002) [3]. For proteins, the results resemble those observed by Ezeocha and collaborators 2014 [4] that found a variation of 2.48 to 6.28% in the amount of proteins. The ash content was below the results obtained by Martins et al., (2014) [5], of 0.90%, but similar to the values found by Kayode et al. (2017) [6], ranging from 0.05 - 1.76%. For carbohydrates, the values found were 11.47 ± 1.46. From this characterization, phytochemical studies, as well as their nutritional and, mainly, biological properties, are already being conducted by the group.