Fufu, a processed food from cassava (Manihot esculenta) tubers is one of the staple foods consumed in Nigeria. Some methods of processing allow it to harbor high cyanide content in form of Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN). Traditionally processed fufu are obtained as wet mash after fermentation. This research looks into processing dry fufu powder with little or no cyanide content as an improvement on fufu production. Traditional method of wet fufu production was employed to produce wet fufu mash. Low cyanide-high- protein dry fufu powder was produced from the wet mash. Microbial flora in the retting water were isolated, characterized and identified as Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella aerogenes, Enterobacter aerogenes, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Escherichia coli, Lactobacillus coryneformis, Candida tropicalis, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Aspergillus sp and Rhizopus sp. The isolates were tested for their ability to ret the tubers and four isolates retted the tubers completely. Two organisms (Lactobacillus coryneformis and Saccharomyces cerevisiae) were used as starter cultures to ret the tubers as single cultures and mixed cultures to produce wet fufu samples F1 (Lactobacillus coryneformis alone), F2 (Saccharomyces cerevisiae alone), and F3 (mixture of Lactobacillus coryneformis and Saccharomyces cerevisiae). The three fufu mashes produced were each dried in the oven at 65oC for 72 hours. They were crushed to powder and sieved, and assessed for their protein and cyanide contents. The percentage crude protein contents were 9.43%, 9.75% and 10.20% respectively and their cyanide contents were 0.028, 0.020 and 0.017mg/g respectively. The samples were aseptically packaged in cellophane bags. They lasted for six months without loosing their organoleptic qualities. Sensory evaluation of the samples accepts all the samples with most preference to F3. Therefore to enable long time storage of fufu with low cyanide and improved protein contents, starter cultures can be used to ferment the tubers and the wet mash aseptically oven-dried, crushed and sieved to fufu powder.
Starter cultures, waste water, cassava tubers, fufu powder, fermentation
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