Effect of Disinfection and Drying of Wild Carob Pods (Neltuma sp.) on the Safety of the Carob Flour

In the hostile and challenging environment of the Paraguayan Chaco, the wild carob pods (Neltuma spp.) are a valuable vegetable resource that provides nutrition and significant economic opportunities for the local populations by means of carob flour production. However, the microbiological quality of the carob flour is limited due to the manual gathering. The main objective of this investigation is to find an efficient disinfectant and its minimum application level to obtain microbial stability in carob flour. The microbial load (total mesophilic aerobes, moulds, and yeasts, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Salmonella spp.) of the flour obtained by disinfection with citric acid (1 and 3%) and sodium hypochlorite (1 and 3%) was compared. Drying tests were carried out at time intervals of 2, 4, 6, and 7 h on whole carob pods to obtain flour in a hot air circulating tray type dryer, and humidity was used as a response variable in a thermobalance (desirable humidity < 5%). A combined process of disinfection with 3% citric acid and hot air circulating tray-type drying for 7 h at 60 °C is proposed to obtain an innocuous carob flour of high microbiological quality.