Chemical Composition And Food Properties Of Gymnarchus Niloticus (Trunk Fish)

E.I. Adeyeye¹ and A.S. Adamu²

¹Department of Chemistry, University of Ado Ekiti, P.M.B. 5363, Ado-Ekiti, (Nigeria) ²Department of Chemistry, College of Education, P.M.B. 250, Ikere-Ekiti, (Nigeria)

ABSTRACT: Dry samples of Gymnarchus niloticus (Trunk fish) were analysed for proximate, mineral and amino acid compositions as well as the food properties. The protein was high (72.89%), organic matter was high (91.07%) and available energy was also high (1.5 MJ/100g). The proportion of energy due to protein was 50.26%. The sample was low in Cu, Cd, Pb, Fe, Co and Cr but slightly high in Na, Ca, P, Mg and K. The total amino acid was 647.6mg/g crude protein while the essential amino acid was 354.8 (or 54.79%). The amino acid scores ranged from 0.60 –1.09 showing valine to be the limiting acid. The protein solubility was very low with pI of 1.2 at pH = 4 and the theoretical pI was pH 3.8. The absorption capacities were high for water and oil but low stabilities for foam and oil, bulk density was high (514.6g/l). The results showed that Trunk fish is a good source of most parameters determined in this report.

KEYWORDS: Trunk fish; Chemical composition; Food properties

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