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Agro-food Technology Station
Technology Service
Agrifood Technology Station (LATS) offers a wide range of scientific and technical services to the technology co-operation and food industries. The station also offers the following technical services: juice processing from raw products (indigenous and exotic fruits and fruit drying, beverages from indigenous tea and wide arrays of anlyitcal work and technical training to SME’s. The University has a host highly qualified and experienced staff, including scientists, technologists and technical assistants to deliver this service to Agro-Food SME’s. For smaller companies in particular this may be burden some in terms of cost. This is where LATS can assists.
The service offered by LATS including a range starting from farm to ready to eat food. Typical areas of approach including the following:
- Advising on post harvest and immediate post-harvest treatment of raw materials
- Quality control checks and monitoring during production as part of good practice
- Analyses related to shelf-life
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New product development, modification of existing product and production of new variants existing lines
- Auditing and advising preparing for audits by prospective clients
New product development
From raw materials to final package product. This includes re-development and improvement of existing products. Presently, we are developing the new products for fruit drying with different preservatives concentrations especially S02. Traditional herbal teas are still an ongoing research.
Product Analysis
We also have the capacity to do a full proximal analysis including fat, crude fibre, protein, ash, moisture, carbohydrates by difference, energy, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, polyphenols and tannin contents.
Analytical Equipment Based in LATS
- Spay dryer
- 1,51 Benchtop fermenter with Biocontroller
- Colorimeter
- Rheology measure: Brookefield and Bostwick
- Gas chromatograph (MS)
- Liquid chromatograph (incl. UV/Vis, FLD and DA detectors
- UV/Vis spectrophotometer with peltier heating
- Moisture analysis using on Autotitrator
- Water activity measurement
- Moisture measurement via infra- red moisture meter
- Drying ovens/ incubator
- Freeze-drier and Bench-top freezedrier
- Protein determination system
- Sohxlet semi- automated system for crude fat determination
- Fibretec analysis (semi-automated) for crude fibre determination
- Bench-top centrifuges (refrigerated)
- Gerber Centrifuges for milk fat analysis
- Shelf (replace in incubation and humidity)
Contact Details
Technology Station Manager: Dr Maboko Mphosi
Telephone: +27 (0)15 268 2785/3359
Fax: +27 (0)15 268 3359
E-mail: mphosim@ul.ac.za
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Publications
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