An accelerated storage test for dehydrated vegetables

When dehydrated vegetables are stored at high temperatures (e.g. in the tropics) they eventually become unacceptable, in most cases because of the development of brown pigments. Testing for ‘tropical’ storage life is usually carried out at 37°, but preliminary tests on a number of different dehydrated vegetables suggested that the deterioration of culinary qualities (colour, flavour and texture) occurring in a certain number of days at 55° was approximately the same as that occurring in the same number of months at 37°. Further experiments on dehydrated potato have confirmed that there is a close correlation between the extent of browning developed under these two sets of conditions.