ABSTRACT

A study to investigate the effects of some traditional dehulling aids during the processing of African breadfruit was undertaken. Traditional dehulling aids such as akanwu, alum, wood ash and palm oil were used at the various levels of African breadfruit preliminary processing stages and 100g of samples of African breadfruit were used for all the samples. Addition of akanwu, alum and wood ash as dehulling aids during parboiling of African breadfruit was found to increase the parboiling time and temperature. Samples parboiled with alum had the highest parboiling time of 7 mm while the sample parboiling with palm oil and the control had the lowest parboiling time of 2 mm and 3 mm respectively. Sample parboiled with akanwu had the highest parboiling temperature of 112°c while sample parboiled with palm oil had the lowest parboiling temperature of 102°c. The parboilinq time and temperature assessed at 5% of probability showed that the dehulling aids caused significant differences (P<0.05) among the samples. Absence of dehulling aids or addition of only palm oil during the parboiling of African breadfruit can facilitate quick loosening of the adhesive layers binding the hulls of the kernels. The presence of these aids was found to result in low dehulling efficiency as these aids increased the strength of the adhesive layer binding the hull after dehulling. However, sample parboiled with palm oil and wood ash gave higher dehulling efficiency of 98.61% and 89.93% respectively compared to samples parboiled with akanwu and alum which had 24.72% and 9.72% respectively. The result of proximate analysis of the sample showed significant differences (P<0.05) among the sample parboiled with the different traditional dehulling aids. Sample parboiled with palm oil had the highest fat content of 9.39% and sample parboiled with akanwu had the lowest value for crude protein of 15.36%. Sensory evaluation carried out showed that the aids produced differences on the organolepic qualities of the cooked seeds. Holding time and cooking time correlated positively for all the  samples.