Effect of Cooking Time on Starch and Cyanide Contents of Freshly Harvested Cassava Tubers Used for Tapioca Production

This study investigated the effect of cooking time on starch and cyanide contents of freshly harvested cassava tubers used for tapioca production. Tapioca is a cassava meal commonly consumed in most part of the world and prepared from freshly harvested cassava tubers. The cassava tubers used for tapioca production are first boiled and sliced, before soaking in water overnight. The cassava tubers used for this study were harvested from the eastern farm of National Root Crops Research Institute, Umudike in Abia State, Nigeria. Some freshly harvested cassava tubers were subjected to 90 minutes cooking in clean water and at intervals of 15 minutes, samples were collected for starch and cyanide analyses. The result showed that increase in cooking time decreased the starch and cyanide contents of the cassava samples. Starch was reduced from 13.37% to 4.65% for every 2 g of starch tuber given 65.22% reduction after 90 minutes. The cyanide content was reduced from 36.65±0.16 to 2.49±0.08 mg/kg after 90 minutes of boiling, given a 93.2% reduction. The statistical analysis on the effect of cooking time on starch and cyanide contents showed significant mean difference (P < 0.0001) at both 5% and 1% levels of the various cooking time of the cassava. It is recommended that cassava used for tapioca production should be adequately cooked to reduce the cyanide content which could result in food poisoning.