Nutritional Quality Evaluation of Garri-Like Product from Sweet Potato

Sweet potato was used to produce garri at 0 (non fermentation), 24, 48, and 72 hours fermentation periods, respectively. Each was used to formulate a feed of 10 % protein and the nutritional quality of the products were evaluated using in-vivo protein quality evaluation. A 28 days feeding eperiment was done using 21 male weanling albino rats and data obtained were used to compute protein quality indices: feeding efficiency ratio (FER), Feed, conversion efficiency (FCE), Protein efficiency ratio (PER), net protein retention (NPR) and apparent digestability (AD). Feed intake for diet A (SPNF), B (SPF1), C (SPF2), D (SPF3), E (cassava garri), F (Casein diet) and G (basal diet) ranged from 713.20 to 528.40g respectively. Diet A-G had a FER of -0.05, 0.02, 0.01, -0.02, 0.08 and 0.07; PER of -0.05, 0.19, 0.14, 0.12, 0.20, 1.00 and 0.00. AD of 97.95, 98.10, 97.60, 98.00, 97.74, 97.90 and 0.00 respectively. This evaluation has shown that sweet potato garri is of low nutritional quality, as it is of high energy value but deficient in growth-supporting nutrients. However, fermented garri samples showed better performance than non-fermented ones.