Research Article
Compositional Evaluation of Annona cherimoya (Custard Apple) Fruit

I.A. Amoo, A.E. Emenike and V.O.E. Akpambang

Trends in Applied Sciences Research, 2008, 3(2), 216-220.

Abstract

The proximate composition, mineral and sugar contents of the seed and juice of the fruit of Annona cherimoya (Custard apple) were determined using standard methods while the physico-chemical properties and chemical composition of the seed oil and juice respectively were also evaluated using standard methods. The protein content of the seed is 17.36% while it is 4.48% for the juice. The fat content of the seed and juice are 29.39 and 1.56%, respectively, while the values for crude fibre are 32.46 and 7.53%, respectively. There are comparable carbohydrate contents of 10.32 and 10.52% for the seed and the juice, respectively. The food energy of the seed is 375.23 kcal while it is 74.04 KCAL for the juice. The seed contains substantial amount of calcium, sodium, potassium and magnesium which are better than the values obtained for the juice. The juice gives higher values of sugar than the seed. The invert sugar of the juice is 161.84 while it is 17.40 for the seed. The fructose content of the juice is 167.27 while it is 17.45 for the seed. The juice contains 268.13 hydrated maltose while the seed contains 26.21. The physico-chemical properties of the oil extracted from the seed has specific gravity of 0.740, acid value of 11.04, peroxide value of 24.04 and saponification value of 52.11. The juice proves to be a good source of vitamins A and C with the values 16.63 μg/100 g R.E. and 43.38 mg/100 g, respectively. The juice contains fixed acidity of 0.023% and volatile acidity of 0.004%. The total solid of the juice is 27.25% while the soluble solid is 10.00%. The analyses showed that Annona cherimoya fruit is a potential food source.

ASCI-ID: 95-175

Table 1). This follows the trend of defatted samples reported by Akubor and Chukwu (1999). The protein content of full-fat seed of cherimoya is lower than 20.9% obtained for cashew kernel flour by Amoo (2005). Cherimoya seed has a high crude fibre content of 32.46%, which may be due to the fibre interlocking the seed and therefore, makes it useful for digestibility preparation (Pearson, 1976).

Table 1:	Proximate composition of Annona cherimoya seed and juice

Table 2:	Mineral composition (g/100 g) of Annona cherimoya seed and juice
*ND = Not detected

Table 3:	Sugar composition (mg/100 g) of Annona cherimoya seed and Juice

The ash contents of both seed and juice are low (0.81 and 0.25%, respectively). The ash content of the seed is slightly higher than 0.63% reported for Bambara groundnut flour by Adebowale et al. (2002) and much lower than 2.08-2.16%, reported by Al-Hooti et al. (2002) for two varieties of tamer dates fruits.

The mineral composition in g 100 g shown in Table 2 shows that the seed and the juice, respectively contain calcium 12.52 and 4.13; sodium 17.23 and 7.31; potassium 21.34 and 8.28; magnesium 19.32 and 7.29; Zinc 0.73 and 0.30. The values are generally higher than those reported by Morton (1987b) for cherimoya and values reported by Al -Hooti et al. (2002) for concentrated date syrup of two varieties of tamer dates. The seeds are rich in some nutritive minerals and therefore could be utilized for animal feed formulation provided the phytochemical studies are done. The juice sample showed higher values for the types of sugar analysed than the values in the seed (p<0.05), as shown in Table 3. This is normal as seeds store sugars as polysaccharides. The juice of cherimoya was found to have fructose content of 167.27 mg/100 g which is much less than 1.35-3.61% reported for the different stages of maturity of yellow cane juice by Qudsieh et al. (2001).

The physicochemical properties of the extracted oil of the seed are shown in Table 4. The oil shows high level of unsaturation indicated by the iodine value of 145.07. The acid value is 11.04 which is higher than 5.64 reported for Bauhinia racemosa seed oil (Amoo and Moza, 1999). The saponification value of 52.11 was recorded which is lower than 343.73 for B. racemosa. The chemical composition of the juice shown in Table 5 indicate that juice contain 16.63 μg/100 R.E of vitamins A and 32.38 m/100 of vitamins C (Morton, 1987b). These vitamins are essential vitamins needed by all categories of people in Nigeria. The total titratable acidity of 0.027% and fixed acidity of 0.023% were obtained for the juice.

Table 4:	Physicochemical properties of Annona cherimoya seed oil

Table 5:	Chemical composition of Juice of Annona cherimoya juice

CONCLUSION

Annona cherimoya is a plant that has not been grown widely in Nigeria unlike Annona muricata. The result of this analysis has shown that the fruit of this plant can be a veritable food source especially in a low income economy. The cream colour and flavour of the juice gives it advantage in ice cream fortification. The seed could be used to develop animal feeds as a result of its nutritive values.

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