Evaluation of Nutritional Composition and Chemometric Characterization of some Varieties of Date Fruits

Abstract

Malnutrition is a major health problem to the world population especially in Africa, despite government’s effort to promote food production. This problem occurs when people do not consume right amounts of essential nutrients, based on lack of information. It is the intention of this research to determine the proximate, food functional properties, mineral contents and characterize the fruit of Phoenix dactylifera L. (Dabino) using Chemometrics method with a view to compared the values and investigate the differences in these varieties. Different varieties of date fruits that are commercially available in Minna, Niger State were randomly collected. All the fresh date fruits were clean with distilled water, dried in laboratory and ground into powder. The results obtained showed that, moisture contents of the studied fruits ranged from (4.00 to 4.29%). Fat, ash, and fiber contents of the date fruits varieties ranged from 0.40 to 1.50%, 3.12 to 3.37% and 1.50 to 2.85% respectively. The Ajwa variety had the highest protein (2.91%) content and the Fari variety the lowest (1.53%). All the four varieties have high carbohydrate content (89.30%, 88.01%, 87.38% and 86.69%) for Dagalla, Fari, Dan-mali and Ajwa respectively. The results also indicated considerable amount of mineral elements such as K, Na, Ca, Mg, Fe, Mn and Cu. With the aid of principal component analysis, the Fari and Ajwa varieties were characterized by high protein, fiber contents, ash contents and emulsion capacity. The dendrogram for hierarchical cluster analysis for proximate composition, mineral contents and food functional properties show that one major cluster is identified which shows that all studied date fruits have some similarities. The sub-clusters which are observed indicates that Ajwa and Fari variety have close similarity in their nutritional contents and could therefore are used as substitute of each other when consumption choice has to be made.