EVALUACIóN DE CONSERVANTES PARA LIMITAR EL RECUENTO DE MOHOS EN AREPAS BAJO DOS CONDICIONES AMBIENTALES

the arepa is a product of massive consumption in colombia, with an expiration date mainly limited by the appearance of molds, whose visually appreciable deterioration generates consumer rejection, detriment of the company's image and economic losses due to product returns. this research focused on comparing the effect of four preservatives under two different environmental conditions and five time points of analysis, in order to determine, which of the preservatives exercised greater restraint upon the mold count in the arepa. exploratory analyzes indicated that both, the sorbic acid and sodium propionate, exert a important limitation of the mold count in managed environments, with mean between 7 and 37 ufc/gr of product. since non-compliance with the assumptions underlying the parametric method of analysis of variance, was used to design nonparametric of wilson, whose implementation does not yield significant differences between the investigated preservatives or between the environmental conditions under study.