Recurrent droughts and soil degradation have had an adverse impact on food security and have increased malnutrition in Zambia. This has necessitated the promotion of conservation farming and diversification of food production. Velvet beans (Mucuna pruriens) is a crop that offers excellent soil conditioning properties and produces large quantities of beans of high protein and energy content. How...

Fresh, ripe cocoa beans from Cameroon (German cocoa/Amelonado group and ICS 40/Trinitario group) were subjected to fermentation-like incubations in acetic acid, lactic acid, or both and to natural fermentation. Two naturally fermented samples from Cuba (UF 654/Trinitario group and C 411/Criollo group) were also investigated. Both cyanidin-3-galactoside and cyanidin-3-arabinoside (found as major...

Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), a specification for a Java component framework recently released by Sun Microsystems, immediately attracted attention of several major software vendors, including IBM, Oracle and Sybase. Analysts agree that EJB has a potential to replace CORBA as a standard for enterprise level applications. Aspect Oriented Programming fits naturally into EJB paradigm, but requires ...

Instant whole beans obtained by drying at 25 °C were evaluated for their chemical, physicochemical, nutritional, microbiological, sensory and rehydration characteristics. The proximal composition of instant whole beans was typical of this kind of food, whereas aw and L*, a* and b* values were 0.639, 98.55, -0.28 and -1.52, respectively. In instant whole beans, 75% of the essential amino acids h...

Ochratoxin A (OA) is a nephrotoxic and nephrocarcinogenic mycotoxin which is predominantly produced by the two ubiquitous fungal genera, Aspergillus and Penicillium. OA is found in foodstuffs, predominantly in cereals but also in coffee beans. Inconsistent results have been published regarding the influence of roasting on the OA content in roasted beans and the transfer into the coffee brew. In...

The maturity of green coffee beans is the most influential determinant of the quality and flavor of the resultant coffee beverage. However, the chemical compounds that can be used to discriminate the maturity of the beans remain uncharacterized. We herein analyzed four distinct stages of maturity (immature, semi-mature, mature and overripe) of nine different varieties of green Coffea arabica be...

Legumes may protect against myocardial infarction (MI). The objective of this study was to determine whether consumption of dried mature beans (referred to as beans), the main legume in Latin America, is associated with MI. The cases (n 2119) were survivors of a first acute MI and were matched by age, sex, and area of residence to randomly selected population controls (n 2119) in Costa Rica. Di...

OBJECTIVE Combating iron deficiency in toddlers with iron-fortified food has proved difficult in countries with phytate-rich diets. For this purpose, a new haem iron preparation was developed. The study compared changes in iron status after administration of refried beans with beans fortified with a haem iron preparation or ferrous sulphate (FeSO4). DESIGN In a masked, stratified-randomised i...

Low-temperature blanching of vegetables activates the enzyme pectin methylesterase (PME), which demethylates cell wall pectins and improves tissue firmness. This temperature activation of PME has been investigated by measuring the formation of methanol in intact tissue of green beans and tomatoes. Rates of methanol formation at temperatures of 35-65 degrees C were obtained by measuring the rele...

The effect of soaking and roasting velvet beans (Mucuna pruriens) on nitrogen utilization and rumen microbial protein synthesis in goats was investigated. Sixteen goats were randomly assigned to four diets in a completely randomized design. Goats were fed a basal diet of Cynodon dactylon hay plus 30% soaked (treatment 1), 30% roasted (treatment 2) and 30% untreated velvet bean (treatment 3). Th...