The guava is one of the most popular tropical fruits, being highly accepted all over Brazil. Many food products can be made from the fruit, such as jams, jellies, liquors and many types of juice. Given the above, the objective of this research was to characterise atomised guava pulp as to its physicochemical composition, and assess its hygroscopic behaviour by means of adsorption isotherms employing different mathematical models. The physicochemical analyses, carried out on both the whole guava pulp and on the atomised guava powder, were: moisture; pH; acidity; soluble solids and ascorbic acid, giving the following results respectively: 88.57-5.69 %; 3.76-3.88, 0.43-0.24 mg 100 g-1; 8.43 to 93.00 ºBrix and 2.77-3.79 mg 100 g-1. The adsorption isotherms were constructed adjusting the experimental data to the mathematical models of GAB, BET, Henderson and Oswin. The Henderson model presented the best fit to the atomised guava powder for all temperatures tested, presenting an error ranging from 09.93 to 12.09% and a correlation coefficient ranging from 0.9900 to 0.9934.
Guava; Fruit; Drying
