Comparative analysis of wood utilization and acceptability of fish from the smoking and frying technologies in Malawi

A study was conducted to compare wood utilization efficiency and acceptability of the processed Engraulicypris sardella and Copadichromis spp. using smoking and frying technologies. The study was conducted on station at Bunda College and at the fisheries beach in Nkhotakota district, Malawi between January to May 2016. On wood utilization, result from the study show that frying a kilogram of fish uses more wood (5.8267±.20003 and 1.8433±.29339) than the rest of the technologies and that the newly improved fish smoking kiln uses the least amount of wood (0.9800±.07937 and .9633 ±.14655). The differences in Copadichromis spp were not significant (P = 0.056) whilst for E. sardella they were significant (P = .000). Interestingly the newly improved kiln used 32% and 46 % less wood for smoking E. sardella and Copadichromis spp., respectively compared to the traditional kiln. On the other hand, the fried products were highly accepted by consumers (8.3000±.16093) compared to other fish products. However, Copadichromis spp. smoked by the traditional kiln was liked most in comparison to the other smoked and fried products (7.3750±.23936). The findings show the potential of the newly improved smoking kiln in improving fish quality and reducing wood usage in fish processing.