Cassava is an important tropical and sub-tropical root crop that is adapted to drought environment. However, severe drought stress significantly influences biomass accumulation and starchy root production. The mechanism underlying drought-tolerance remains obscure in cassava. In this study, changes of physiological characters and gene transcriptome profiles were investigated under dehydration s...

Cassava is an important crop in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Cassava can be produced adequately in drought conditions making it the ideal food security crop in marginal environments. Although cassava can tolerate drought stress, it can be genetically improved to enhance productivity in such environments. Drought adaptation studies in over three decades in cassava have identif...

Currently the natural crude oil depletion has been brought into awareness. This affects many industries including petrochemical manufacturing. As a result, there are many attempts to develop novel processes to produce substitutes to such petrochemical products including plastics. Polylactic acid, made from polymerization of optically pure isomer of lactic acid, is one of such examples. In addit...

OBJECTIVE Iodine Deficiency Disorders (IDD) as one of the leading nutritional problems has been increasing through time due to iodine deficiency, aggravating factors and IDD knowledge in many parts of Ethiopia. The effect of changing diet and altitude on goitre prevalence is assessed. METHODOLOGY Randomly selected five regional states (Amhara, Oromiya, Tigray, SNNP and Benshangul-Gumuz) were ...

Several etiological and epidemiological studies have been undertaken to determine the disease causal agent and the mechanism of spread of Cassava brown streak disease (CBSD). Until recently, two distinct potyviruses have been reported to cause the disease. These are Cassava brown streak virus (originated in Tanzania but most widely spread) and Ugandan Cassava brown streak virus (reported in Uga...

Indigenous beers (chicha) are part of the indigenous culture in Ecuador. The fermentation process of these beers probably relies on microorganisms from fermented substrates, environment and human microbiota. We analyzed the microbiota of artisanal beers (including a type of beer produced after chewing boiled cassava) using bacterial culture and 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene-based tag-encoded FL...

The origin of root softening during cassava retting was investigated in a natural retting and in a sterile fermentation. Softening only occurred in the natural retting. Although high activities of endogenous pectin methyl esterase were found in cassava extracts from both fermentations, the depolymerizing enzymes polygalacturonase, active at low pH, and pectate lyase were only found in the non-s...

The aim of this study was to determine and compare the melting (Tm), glass transition (Tg) and mechanical relaxation (Tα) temperatures of a new waxy cassava starch. Thermal transitions measurements were obtained by Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Dynamical Mechanical Thermal Analysis (DMTA). The experimental data showed a high correlation between water volume fraction and melting te...

Nutritional properties of fufu analog produced from co-processing of cassava and cocoyam were studied. Cassava and cocoyam were fermented for 72 h, dried to obtain fufu flour. Proximate, functional, minerals, antinutritional factor, pasting properties, and sensory evaluation of various samples were determined. The results revealed that the moisture contents of the samples showed significant dif...

Production of αamylase under solid state fermentation by Streptomyces erumpens MTCC 7317 was investigated using cassava fibrous residue, one of the major solid waste released during extraction of starch from cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz). Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to evaluate the effect of the main variables, i.e., incubation period (60 h), moisture holding capacity (60%)...