PAPER TITLE : EFFECT OF SOME PROCESSING FACTORS ON THE EASE OF MILLING DRIED FERMENTED CASSAVA ROOT.

APPLIED TROPICAL AGRICULTURE | VOLUME 14 NUMBER 1 2009

Paper Details

  • Author(s) : IDOWU DAVID OLUWAFEMI
  • Abstract:

 Cassava (Manihot Esculenta Crantz) is a tropical economic crop with high potential as a partial substitute to wheat and corn flour A 24 factorial experiment were designed to investigate the effect of drying temperature, dewatering pressure, fermentation period and size reduction methods on ease of milling dried fermented cassava. The 2 levels each of drying temperature, size reduction methods, dewatering pressure , and fermentation period were used for the experiment. The quantities of dried fermented cassava flour milled per specific time were used in determining the ease of milling. It was observed that an increase in drying temperature from 50°C to 80°C reduce the ease of milling cassava root by about 45%, while an increase in fermentation period from 3 days to 5 days increase ease of milling by about 70%. The experiment shows that increases in dewatering pressure only had effect on the initial milling period and later remain insignificant throughout the experiment. The data were analyzed using Yates algorithm. The analysis shows that the main effect of fermentation period and drying temperature were significant at 5% level of probability, while the interaction effect of dewatering pressure and fermentation period is statistically significantly at 1% level of probability. It is of the opinion that the result of this work will be of great importance to flour miller and food processor in determine the correct production process for handling a particular milling process in production of cassava flour