Influence of Moisture Content Variation on the Percentage Oil Yield of Soursop (Annona muricata) Seeds.

Abstract

Soursop (Annona muricata) is an exotic fruit grown in the tropics. It is a unique kind of fruit with green slightly hard skin when unripe that turns yellowish-green when ripe. The seeds of Soursop fruit were varied at 4.20%, 8.48%, 12.40%, 15.99% and 19.30% moisture contents (wet basis) and oil were extracted using the solvent method. The solvent extraction method was employed using a soxhlet extractor, with normal hexane as the solvent. The soxhlet extractor was set up to run three extraction processes at the same time and the extraction was done in triplicates for each of the moisture contents. The percentage oil yields taking an average of the three extracts at the five moisture contents were 23.41%, 33.87%, 30.02%, 33.82% and 23.05% respectively. Therefore it is recommended that to obtain optimum oil yield from soursop seeds, the seeds should be conditioned to 8.48% moisture content, however, a range of 8.48% to 15.99% moisture content (wet basis) is suitable for high oil yield from soursop seeds.