.

Dietary fibre has been recognized in the preparation of food with high nutritional quality in maintaining human
overall physical well-being.Cashew apples were washed, cut into pieces before juice extraction. The cashew apples
residues were conditioned in water at ratio 1:2, pH 4.5 at 35ºC for 15minutes, oven dried at 55oC and milled to obtain
flour. Six composite flours were made from wheat flour supplemented with cashew apple flour at different proportions
of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30% and wheat flour as control. The inclusion of cashew apples showed gradual increase in
moisture (11.13-12.58%), fat (1.48-2.11%) and fiber (0.99-3.85%) with concomitant decrease in ash (2.49-1.95%),
protein (11.15-10.11%), and carbohydrate (72.76-69.30%).The neutral detergent soluble (NDS) ranged from 53.67-
74.67% while control flour was higher in NDS (78.67%) and hemicellulose (16.57%). The range of values obtained
for neutral detergent fibre and acid detergent fibre were: 21.27%-32.20% and 8.97%-21.33% respectively. Most of
the fiber fractions were significantly different (p<0.05) at different levels of inclusion of cashew apple flour. This study
recommended wheat and cashew apple flour blends as rich sources of digestible fibres when compared with control as
an advantage to consumers.
Keywords: Wheat, Cashew apple, composite flour, proximate, fibre fraction.