The shelf life of ground melon seed stored at room temperature was investigated. Melon seed at moisture content of 5.2% were ground and stored in an airtight plastic container. Physicochemical analysis such as free fatty acid, acid value, peroxide value, iodine value and moisture content were carried out on the ground melon seed oil for a period of 18 days at 2 day intervals. Also the sensory analysis of soup prepared from ground melon seed at each storage period was studied. The physicochemical properties results were significantly (p<0.05) different and showed that the free fatty acid content increased from 3.95% to 9.31%, acid value decreased from 1.88% to 1.12%, peroxide value increased from 12.30% to 16.40%, iodine value decreased from 57.70% to 26.70% and moisture content decreased from 5.2% to 1.6%. The sensory properties value showed no significant (p<0.05) difference between the 0 and 10th day of storage. There were virtually slight decrease in the sensory attributes, but all values were still with the acceptable limit (greater than 3 points) of the scale. Also there was no observable effect of changes in physicochemical properties on the sensory. It was concluded that, the shelf-life of ground melon seed used for soup was valid throughout the 18 day storage and ground melon seed used for other purposes such as edible oil might have a shelf-life of 2 days
Keywords: Ground melon seed, Shelf-Life, physicochemical properties and sensory properties., room temperature
