Abstract:
Effective utilization of the tannia cocoyam tubers for ensuring food and nutrition security,
alleviating malnutrition islimited by the presence of anti-nutritional factorsthat needs improved
processing. Effects of boiling, soaking and natural fermentation at different levels of treatments
on tannia cocoyam flour proximate composition, mineral content, anti-nutritional factors and
functional properties were studied. Full factorial design used with factors: control, boiling
temperature (75, 85 and 95°C), and soaking time (24, 48 and 72 hours), and fermentation time
(24, 48 and 72 hours). The proximate compositions for the interaction effects for the tannia
cocoyam corm flour samples were found to be 5.85-7.98%, 7.66-5.82%, 0.75-0.20%, 3.17-
2.23%, 2.52-1.23%, 89.45-87.22% and 379.58-386.38 kcal/100g, moisture, crude protein,
crude fat, crude fiber, ash, and energy, respectively. Similarly, the mineral contents were found
to be were 0.58-2.15mg/100g, 0.46-0.90 mg/100g, 38.66-71.01 mg/100g, for Fe, Zn, and Ca,
respectively. The anti-nutritional compositions for the interaction effects boiling, soaking and
fermentation on tannia cocoyam corm flour samples were 112.44-34.89mg/100g, 12.26-
7.43mg/100g, and 106.63-38.66mg/100g for oxalate, phytate and tannin contents, respectively.
The interaction effects for the functional properties of the flour were also found to be 0.68-0.84
g/ml, 204-307%, 0.85-1.52 g/g, 5.48-8.82 g/g, 6.88-12.34% and 74-81oC for BD, WAC, OAC,
SP, SI and GT, respectively.