Hydration behaviour of legumes with and with-out seed coat in split form at room temperature (28°C) was
studied. Equilibrium moisture content (EMC) on soaking at
room temperature of these legumes with seed coat varied
from 53 to 65% (wb). Soybean hydrated fast while horse
gram, black gram and green gram hydrated very slowly.
Legumes in split form hydrated fast and completed their
hydration in 3 h. EMC at room temperature varied from 52
to 58%. Peleg’s equation could be fi tted to the hydration of
all legumes except green gram and horse gram. Coefficient
of correlation for legume and splits (dhal) varied from 0.96
to 0.99, thus proving the validity of Peleg’s equation. EMC
of masur dhalfitted perfectly to the Peleg’s equation. EMC
predicted from average k
1
and k
2
values remained almost
same in legume splits.
Keywords Legume
.
Legume splits
. Peleg’s equation
.
Dhal
. Hydration
.
Equilibrium moisture content
Introduction
Nisseren and Brian McKenna (1997) studied hydration phe-nomenon in red kidney beans in blanched and unblanched
form at four temperatures and hydration data was fitted to
Peleg’s equation. Because of the plasticity development
in the seed coat of kidney beans while blanching, Peleg’s
equation could apply more adequately in the blanched
beans compared to un-blanched beans. Sopade and Obekpa
(1990) studied sorption behaviour of soybean, cow pea and
peanuts at low, room and high temperatures and reported
that Peleg’s constant k
1
varied with temperature while
Peleg’s constant k
2
was not affected. In the present work
legumes with and without seed coat were hydrated at room
temperature (~28°C) and their hydration behaviour was
studied. Attempts were also made to fi t the sorption data of
legumes to Peleg’s equation (Peleg 1988).
Materials and methods
Legumes with seed coat including horse gram (Dolichos
bifl orus), green gram (Phaseolus aureus Roxb), chick pea
or Bengal gram (Cicer arietinum), black gram (Phaseo-lus mungo Roxb), cow pea (Vigna catjang), tur (Cajanus
cajan), kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), soybean (Glycine