ABSTRACT
With the purpose of producing a low cost flour, looking for its exploitation as a supplementary food for the school and nursery children in the rural area, unripe and ripe banana were submitted to a sun-drying for an 18 hours period. The ripe bananas had an additional drying in an oven adjusted at 60ºC for 24 hours. Later on, the chemical composition of the flour was evaluated by the ash, total carbohydrate, reduced sugar and protein analyses. The statistical analysis showed that for the percentage of reduced sugars and carbohydrates significant differences occurred between the treatments, while for the other percentages such effects were not observed.
Key words:
drying; banana flour; chemical components