Comparative Quality Evaluation of Gari Blends Enriched With Soy-Flour and Soy-Concentrate

The quality characteristics of gari semolina enriched with soy flour and soy concentrate were evaluated and compared. Soybean flour and soybean concentrate were used to enrich fermented, dewatered and sifted wet cassava meal each at 10% level of enrichment just before toasting to produce soy-gari (sample B) and soy- concentrate gari (sample C) while un-enriched gari (sample A) served as control. Results showed that functional properties were generally lower in sample B than samples A and C except in bulk density where a slight increase was noted. Water absorption capacity (WAC) increased significantly with samples A and C with both having the same value of 438.59 (%). The swelling index value for sample A (6.48 v/v) was found to be higher compared to the values of sample B (4.72 v/v) and sample C (5.52 v/v). There was no definite trend noticed in bulk density of the three samples. There was no noticeable difference in the moisture content, ash, and crude fibre except crude fat, protein content and carbohydrate. The protein corresponding values for samples A, B and C were 0.90%, 3.68% and 6.13% respectively while corresponding values of carbohydrate contents for all the samples ranged from 74.69 to 84.33%, with sample A having the highest value of 84.33% while sample B (74.69%) had the lowest value. The mineral content was higher in the soy-concentrate gari than other samples and as the acidity increased so the pH decreased. There were significant differences (P lessthan 0.05) in the cyanide content between sample A and the supplemented samples B and C. The phytic acid content had no significant difference (P greaterthan 0.05) for all the samples. The study has shown that incorporation of defatted soy-concentrate at 10% level to produce enriched gari has enhanced the nutrient quality of “gari” especially the protein, fat, ash and the mineral contents better than that from soy flour.