Dele Raheem

Effect of amylase treatment on the consistency of cooked, fermented oat bran porridge

Oat bran porridges were cooked and fermented at 5, 10, 15, and 20% solids (as is basis). Cooking was carried out on gas stove and viscograph. Supplementation with malt flour at 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 1%. Cooked oat bran porridge was inoculated with fresh yoghurt and fermented 18 h overnight in an incubator at 42 degrees C. Falling number values were made to estimate the effects of amylase treatments by addition of malt flour on oat bran slurry when heated in an aqueous suspension. Pasting properties were observed with the viscograph and consistency measurements were made with Bostwick consistometer. The falling number method was not suitable for consistency measurements due to wide variations in values obtained. Enzymatic additions reduced the consistency of porridge with an increase in flowability during measurements. The peak heights obtained from the viscograms reduced proportionally with an increase in malt flour supplementation. The desirability of a product with higher energy values and a sufficiently low consistency that is spoonable was possible with cooked, fermented oat bran porridge.

The Need for Agro-Allied Industries to Promote Food Security by Value Addition to Indigenous African Food Crops

Food security is a major concern in developing countries and requires urgent attention and collaborative effort from all stakeholders. As the human population continues to increase, the demand for food becomes far greater than the supply can meet. There is a need to cultivate more indigenous food crops and to diversify into new products by using processing and preservation techniques to ensure that more people have access to good quality, nutritious foods. It is therefore essential that agro-allied industries in African countries receive encouragement to improve the application of technology for processing raw food crops, increasing their shelf life, improving nutritional values and packaging, and maintaining high quality standards. This paper emphasizes the potential benefits for three staple African foods – maize, cassava and sorghum. The application of science to transform the properties of these foods and relevant technologies, such as extrusion cooking, can add value to their use in the immediate future and will help in meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

Transfer of technology from north to south ‐ meeting the needs of a rural environment: a review of the Mtwara‐Lindi water project

Suggests that external inputs and interventions can be beneficial or a waste of resources, depending on many complex factors which are interrelated. Deals with how the approach used in the transfer of technology from an industrialized country to a developing country can be beneficial. The direct involvement of Finnish expertise in a remote region of Tanzania, to improve the water supply, when reverting to grassroots participation, led to positive results. Observes, in hindsight, that giving more space for local initiatives would have led to less dependence on foreign expertise and to faster growth of the indigenous engineering capacity.