Desenvolvimento de um snack com base em cogumelos lentinula edodes

Abstract

Consumer’s habits have been changing over the years, in which the safety and nutritional value of the product are now the most sought requisites. This new purchase intention induces companies to quickly modify their products according to the requirements of consumers in order to compete and become notable in the market. Therefore, this study aims to develop a new product based on mushroom L.edodes, developed at the Bioinvitro – Biotecnologia, Lda.Dried products have been accepted to an appreciable extent, especially dried fruits and vegetables. Based on this new trend, the product developed within this thesis is based on a snackcomposed of dehydrated L.edodes in two different versions, a spicy and a sweet snack. These products were prepared by dehydrating the mushrooms via application of a temperature ramp between 40ºC and 55ºC, during 8 to 12hours. For the spicy snack it was used 96% laminated fresh mushrooms, 2% paprikaand about 1% salt and 1% piri-píri and for the sweet snack it was used 96% laminated fresh mushrooms, 2% organic sugar and 2% cinnamon. After the improvement of the two products, these were characterized both physicochemical and sensory and it was shown that these snacks can be a source of vitamin C, fiber and polyunsaturated acids and in general, the tasters liked the product. In parallel, a market analysis was also performed where topics such as competition, the consumer and key suppliers were explored in order to understand what market segment the product is going to enter. Given the various products that the company had so far, it was decided to give the name of "SpicySnack Shiitake" and "Sweet Snack Shiitake" with a shelf life of two months under storage conditions, that is away from the sun light, in a cool (<25 ° C), dry place, yet to be approved.

Date of Award	10 Feb 2017
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Sandra M. Ferrador (Supervisor) & Ana Maria Gomes (Co-Supervisor)