IMPACT OF NATURAL PRESERVATIVES ON THE QUALITY OF TIGERNUT (Cyperus esculentus) DRINK DURING STORAGE

Abstract

The high cost of milk in developing countries has led to the development of alternative source of drink from plant materials. A protein-rich drink can be produced from locally available plant foods at an affordable price in place of animal protein which is scarce and expensive. The analogue of milk can also be consumed by patients with lactose-intolerance. This study therefore evaluates the preservative effects of garlic and ginger on some quality attributes of stored tigernut drink. Freshly prepared tigernut drink was subjected to seven (7) different preservative treatment and stored under ambient (30±2 oC) and refrigeration temperature (5±1 oC) conditions. Tigernut drink (250 ml) was dispensed into 8 clean sterile plastic bottles which were labeled T1-T7. The protein content of tigernut drink samples ranged between 0.29 to 1.06% for samples stored at ambient temperature, with sample T7 having the highest value. While those samples stored at refrigeration temperature ranged between 0.55 to 1.03%. There was no significant different (p< 0.05) as the number of days increased. The pH value for the samples ranged from 4.01 to 6.68 at ambient temperature. It was observed that the samples tend to be more acidic with increasing number of storage days at refrigeration storage. pH ranged from 6.22 to 6.76. Sample T1 had the highest pH value at day 1 while sample T7 had the least pH value at day 8. No significant difference (p<0.05) existed among all the samples. Total viable Count (TVC) were showed visible growth of TVC during the days. On the first day of the ambient storage there were more than limit of detection (LOD) of the total viable count on the sample T1. However, sample T4 and T5 had the highest microbial loads during the day 8 respectively while the least load was recorded for sample T7 on day 1, at ambient storage.