The Potential of Freshly Bred Orange-Fleshed Sweet Potato Varieties in Combating Vitamin A Deficiency

Bao, Badi Mwalimu (2020) The Potential of Freshly Bred Orange-Fleshed Sweet Potato Varieties in Combating Vitamin A Deficiency. Masters thesis, The Open University of Tanzania.

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Abstract

The aim of the study was to evaluate the potential of freshly bred Orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) varieties in combating vitamin A deficiency. Two OFSP varieties (Mataya and Kiegea) and two white-fleshed sweet potato (WFSP) varieties (Sinia and Vumilia) were used for the study. Estimation of moisture, fat, ash, protein, carbohydrates and crude fibre was conducted using standard AOAC procedures. The β carotene of OFSP was determined by UV Spectrophotometric method. The findings revealed that there is high moisture content in the OFSP varieties which ranged from 71.68  0.46% to 72.10  0.25% for Mataya and Kiegea respectively. Crude protein (0.91  0.02) g and ash content (0.44 ± 0.02) g content was high in Kiegea and were the least in WFSP varieties. However, the Mataya variety recorded the highest amount of crude fibre (0.15 ± 0.01) g/100g and the least was observed in WFSP varieties. Fat content was high in Kiegea (0.25 ± 0.02) g while Mataya had the least fat content (0.19 ± 0.05) g. OFSP variety (Kiegea) recorded lowest carbohyadrates, which contains (26.27 ± 0.46) g/100g. The other task was to determine the β-carotenes of the unprocessed and processed OFSP varieties. The retention rate of β-carotene, (78.97% - 80.44%) was higher in boiled OFSP potatoes than in fried OFSP potatoes (62.88% - 67.83%). Results on sensory quality of locally available WFSP and OFSP varieties indicated insignificant differences in overall acceptability between Mataya, Kiegea and Vumilia. The optimum amount of OFSP (g/day) required to meet Vitamin A (VA) requirements for different age groups (7-12 months to 10-13 years) varied from 98.91 and 144.27 to 148.36 and 216.41g/day for Kiegea and Mataya varieties respectively. This implies that Kiegea variety is a richer source of β-carotene than Mataya variety suggesting its great potential in combating VAD.

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