Description of postharvest treatments of wild pepper (Piper spp.) in Madagascar and analysis of their impacts on some main quality characteristics

In the purpose of controlling, improving and promoting the quality of wild peppers produced in Madagas-car, there is a need to study the local existing postharvest treatments and to measure their impact on some major quality characteristics. Four wild pepper postharvest production systems consisting in two wet and two dry processes were described precisely. The wet process differs from the dry one as it con-tains two combined operations called blanching and sweating. Although it is called "dry", the dry process includes a steeping stage. Samples collected on these four different systems were analysed regarding their contents in piperine and essential oil. It could be shown that the quantities of piperine and of essen-tial oil vary considerably (in a ratio of about 1 to 6 for both constituents) in the fresh wild peppers. We could also find that piperine content in transformed pepper is stable no matter the process used when the essential oil content is reduced, up to 27%, by the wet process. In these "after treatment" samples, piperine content was up to nine times lower and essential oil content up to six times higher than the spec-ifications given by the International Standard Organization (ISO 959-1: 1998) for Piper nigrum ready for commercialization. (Résumé d'auteur