Assessment of proximate composition of oven dried Channa punctatus at three different temperatures

In Bangladesh malnutrition remains a significant development challenge where fish is an irreplaceable animal-source food in the diet of millions of people. However, dried fish is also a great source of nutrition but it may be infected or destroyed during drying due to insect infestation. In that case oven drying is a great solution against insect infestation. However existing data on the proximate composition and optimum temperature of oven dried fish is not available. The purpose of the study was to fill-up the gap in the necessary data on proximate composition by estimating the protein, lipid, ash and moisture as well as to find out the optimum temperature for drying fish at oven. The experiment was conducted at the laboratory of Department of Fisheries, University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. The species was collected from the local fish market of Rajshahi city and brought into the quality control laboratory of Department of Fisheries and measured, weighted, processed and finally dried in oven at the temperature of 60 0C, 65 0C and 70 0C, respectively. The average length and weight of the selected species was 16.40±0.80cm and 47.40±6.01gm, respectively. Average drying period were 23.30±1.00 (60 0C), 21.10±1.00 (65 0C) and 18.05±1.00 (70 0C) hr, respectively. The proximate compositions (protein, lipid, ash, and moisture) were analyzed using standard method. The protein content varied from 59.31±0.45% (70oC) to 66.29±0.75% (60oC), lipid content ranged from 5.89±0.63% (70 0C) to 5.93±0.68% (60oC), moisture content varied from 12.33±0.66% (70 0C) to 16.10±0.79% (60 0C) and ash content ranged from 1.53±0.09% (70oC) to 2.61±0.39% (60 0C), respectively. Protein, ash and moisture contents were significantly varied from each other. The proximate composition showed better result in 60 0C temperature among three temperatures.