Cutia-Chesnut (Couepia edulis (Prance) Prance) is a fibrous fruit from western Amazon containing a tasteful almond that native peaple toast and mill to eat with cassava flour. The organoleptic characteritics of the almond make it a potential product for consumption at the cities in Brazil and abroad. Different from industries of oil extraction, the home consumer prefer and pay more for non-fragmented almonds. This is the first reason to develop an equipment to extract the almond from the fruit; the other reason is the lack of studies to develop methodologies of extraction for Cutia-Chesnut. This paper present part of the analisis recomended to the development of a methodology to extract the almond from the fruit: were avaliated qualitatively the rheological behaviour and mesocarp hidration; and measured the irregularities and sphericity of transversal section in respect to the perimeter of the fruit; the excentricity of transversal section in respect to its total area; and ocupation rate of the almond on transversal and longitudinal sections. These information will be used to develop an instrumentation to extract the almond, intact, from the fruit, with small operational risk and aplicable on forest and agroindustries.
instrumentation; Cutia-chesnut; almond; processing; extraction
