Fermentation of high quality cassava flour into agbelima, an indigenous fermented cassava dough

Abstract

High quality cassava flour produced by the dehydration of unfermented de-watered grated cassava is currently being promoted nationwide for use as as a composite flour in the bakery industry. This work was carried out to ferment such high quality flour into agbelima, a fermented cassava meal. Lactobacillus plantarum was isolated as the domoinant lactic acid bacteria in both unfermented flour and agbelima. L. plantarum isolates were successfully used as a single starter culture for fermenting cassava dough, reconstituted from unfermented cassava flour into agbelima within 72h. Spontaneous fermentation of the reconstituted cassava flour also produced agbelima even without the use of a starter culture. Addition of glucose to reconstituted cassava flour increased the rate of fermentation even without glucose fermentation occurred because the flour contained enough fermentable sugars to support the growth of the lactic acid bacteria leading to acidification of the dough Banku prepared from both reconstituted cassava flour inoculated with L. plantarum as starter culture and the spontaneously fermented reconstituted cassava flour were preferred to reconstituted agbelima flour and a market sample of agbelima. There was no difference in the overall acceptability between the reconstituted cassava flour fermented spontaneously or with L. plantarum as starter culture. Four enteric pathogens Salmonella typhimurium 9, Shigella disenteriae 2357T, Echerichia coli D2188, Vibrio cholerae C-230 inoculated into fermenting cassava mash died off by 48h of fermentation. High quality cassava flour fermented for 72h into agbelima will be free of enteric pathogens studied, which are among the major food contaminating organisms. Agbelima can therefore be safely prepared from unfermented cassava flour simply by reconstituting it with water into a dough and fermenting spontaneously for 72h