Barasa Mercy Mukite

The processing of beans begins with a particularly time-consuming procedure, the hydration of the seeds. Ultrasonic treatment (US) represents a potential environmentally friendly method for process acceleration, while near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) is a proposedly suitable non-invasive monitoring tool to assess compositional changes. Our aim was to examine the hydration process of red kidney beans of varying sizes and origins. Despite the varying surface areas, the beans’ soaking times of 13–15, 15–17, and 17–19 mm did not reveal significant differences between any of the groups (control; low power: 180 W, 20 kHz; high power: 300 W, 40 kHz). US treatment was observed to result in the release of greater quantities of water-soluble components from the beans. This was evidenced by the darkening of the soaking water’s color, the increase in the a* color parameter, and the rise in the dry matter value. NIRs, in combination with chemometric tools, are an effective tool for predicting the characteristics of bean-soaking water. The PLSR- and SVR-based modelling for dry matter content and light color parameters demonstrated robust model fits with cross and test set-validated R² values (>0.95), suggesting that these techniques can effectively capture the chemical information of the samples.