Nutritional Evaluation of Locust Bean Seeds (Parkia specie)

Abstract

Raw and roasted locust bean seeds were subjected to proximate and amino acid analyses as measures for assessing its nutritive quality. Results obtained revealed the following range of values; dry matter (96.22- 97.09%), crude protein (25.41-26.45%), crude fat (16.68 -18 54%), crude fibre (15.91 -17.88%), ash (4.69-5.38%) and nitrogen free extract (30.81-31.56%). The crude fibre of locust bean was observed to be relatively high. Generally, heat processing reduced the concentrations of most of the amino acids with the exception of aspartic acid, serine, glutamic acid, proline, glycine, alanine, leucine and tyrosine which had their values increased due to heat processing. Locust bean was observed to be high in lysine (5.78g/16gN and 4.74/16gN in the raw and roasted locust bean seeds respectively). It was however found to be low in the sulphur containing amino acids, methionine and cystine. The concentrations of these amino acids in the seeds were greatly affected by heat processing. The most limiting amino acid in locust bean was found to be cystine with 1.32g/16gN in the raw seeds and 0.69g/16gN in the roasted seeds. Among the essential amino acids, leucine was observed to have the highest concentration in locust bean with the value of 8.42g/16gN in the roasted seeds. Glutamic acid had the highest amino acid concentration of 13.59g/16gN in the raw and 14.06/16gN in the roasted seeds.