Abstract
This study was carried out to determine major nutrient profiles changes of tiger nut plant during its growth period. The plant leaves, roots, tuber moisture, starch, fat and protein were analyzed by oven drying, enzymatic hydrolysis, glucose assay, soxhlet extraction and kjeldahl methods. The results show the moisture content was decreased during its growth cycle but varied with different plant organ. For leaves, the starch content was increased with reducing oil content. For roots, oil content was highest (8%) at the 100th day, and it was gradually decreased (3%) till harvest time with non-significant changes of starch content. For tuber, reducing sugar and protein content was insignificant where the starch and oil content increased significantly but the changes were irregular in the middle growing. For optimum macronutrient yields, it is recommended to harvest the plant at 142nd day for starch. The delayed harvesting may lead to increase in oil content while reducing its total starch contents. For the starch purpose, the harvest time could be around 142 days. However, harvest time could require staying longer in soil. Key words: Tiger nut, oil, starch, growth cycle, nutrients enrichment.
Highlights
Tiger nut (Cyperus esculentus L.) is an edible perennial grass-like C4 plant of the sedge family (Turesson et al, 2010)
The results show the moisture content was decreased during its growth cycle but varied with different plant organ
The type of soil moisture profile was characterized by its various levels of soil water content which was relatively small, and surface soil moisture was low than others
Summary
Tiger nut (Cyperus esculentus L.) is an edible perennial grass-like C4 plant of the sedge family (Turesson et al, 2010). Tiger nut is tuber usable grass and called chufa, nut grass, yellow nut sedge, earth almond, edible galingale and ground almond (Defelice, 2002; SanchezZapata et al, 2012). It is widely used for human and animal consumption as a nutritious food and feed in Africa, Europe and America (Sanchez-Zapata et al, 2012). The tiger nut oil has high monounsaturated fatty acids, similar to olive, avocado and hazelnut oil (Ezeh et al, 2014). These monounstaturated oil has high unsaponifiable matter, phospholipids and other bioactive compounds such as tocopherols, phytosterols and polyphenols
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