Abstract

FABRICATION OF BREADFRUIT DEHULLER AND COMPARATIVE QUALITY ASSESSMENT OF THE DEHULLED AFRICAN BREADFRUIT (Treculla Africana)

Chigozie C. N. Chimee, Chika C. Unegbu and Obinna Ajah*

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Abstract

The traditional methods of dehulling breadfruits is very tedious and exhausting and this drudgery has been underlined as one of the foremost challenges militating against the realization of large production of African breadfruit, despite their widespread acceptance. This study fabricated breadfruit dehuller and evaluated the quality assessment of the dehulled African breadfruit (Treculla Africana) in comparison with the manually dehulled African breadfruit with respect to their proximate, mineral and amino acid profile. Standard analytical methods for proximate, spectrophometric method of mineral analysis and high performance liquid chromatographic method for amino acid profiling were employed. The results shows non-significant (p˂0.05) difference in the proximate composition, mineral composition and amino acid profile of the mechanically and manually dehulled African breadfruit. The protein, fat, ash, moisture, fibre and carbohydrate contents ranged from 14.07 – 14.82%, 6.70 – 7.00%, 5.30 – 5.60%, 9.50 – 10.40%, 3.00 – 3.10%, and 60.08 – 60.23% respectively. The potassium content of both mechanically and manually dehulled African breadfruit is 1090 mg/100g – 1096mg/100g, calcium contents is 290.50 - 286.20 mg/100g, phosphorus content is 330.80 – 310.00 mg/100g. Copper, iron, and zinc contents are within the range of 3.90-4.30 mg/100g, 15.21 mg/100g and 18.70mg/100g respectively. The amino acid content of the analyzed ABF were appreciable with Leucine (6.11 mg/100g) as the most abundant essential amino acid. From the outcome of the analysis, the mechanical method of dehulling breadfruit does not affect the nutritional content therefore the construction and usage of mechanical breadfruit dehuller should be encouraged because African breadfruit has appreciable amount of proximate components, minerals and amino acids which are very vital to human body.

Keywords: fabrication, Mechanical dehuller, Treculla Africana, Nutrition, Traditional dehulling.