Development of High Protein and Vitamin A Flakes from Sweet Potato Roots and Leaves
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Date
2015Author
Odongo, Nicanor Obiero
Abong’, George Ooko
Okoth, Michael W
Karuri, Edward G
Type
ArticleLanguage
enMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Sweet potato (
Ipomoea
batatas
) is one of the most important, versatile and unexploited crops in
Kenya. The crop is well adapted to smallholder farming systems, inexpensive to produce, relativ
e-
ly drought tolerant and gives high yields even with minimum inputs. Although widely pr
oduced in
Kenya, sweet potato remains primarily a subsistence crop. Lack of organized marketing, limited
consumer interest and low value addition activities are some of the factors that have contributed
to low commercialization of the crop. The overall objective of the current study was to investigate
the suitability of incorporating sweet potato leaves into the roots to produce nutritious sweet p
o-
tato flakes with high vitamin A and protein content.
Sweet potato roots were cured to increase the
endogenous a
mylase enzyme and then washed and pre-cooked to enable starch hydrolysis to in-
crease sweetness of the flakes and then heated to boiling to enable mashing. Dried sweet potato
leaves powder was then added to the mash sweet potato roots at varying percentages
and then
dried using single drum drier. Addition of sweet potato leaves was found to significantly (p < 0.05)
increase protein content from 6.6% protein to 15.40% when the leaves constituted 50% of the
flakes. Beta carotene content of the flakes decreased
from 7986
μg
/100g when no leaves were
added to 3979
μg
/100g when the leaves constituted 50% of the flakes. The addition of the leaves
reduced the overall acceptability. Colour was the most adversely affected while texture was the
least affected by the
addition of sweet potato leaves. However, all the flakes with up to 30% leaves
were acceptable to the panelists with respect to colour, taste, texture and overall acceptability.
Incorporating sweet potato leaves into the roots can therefore improve sweet p
otato protein and
hence improve nutrition and value addition of root
-based products such as flakes and flour.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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