Home|Journals|Articles by Year|Audio Abstracts
 

-

Equijost. 2018; 5(1): 87-92


MINERAL ELEMENT AND AMINO ACID COMPOSITION OF WATER MELON SEEDS FROM SELECTED AGRICULTURAL FIELDS IN ZURU DAM-SITE, ZURU, KEBBI STATE, NIGERIA

Y. Yahaya; O. P. Godwin.




Abstract

Poor families often suffer deficiencies in key nutrients such as amino acids. Identifying cheap sources of these nutrients would improve their health. This study therefore reviewed the mineral element and amino acid content of water melon (Citrilluslanatus) seeds randomly sampled from nine randomly selected Agricultural fields in Zuru, Kebbi State. The content trends found were (high to low) P>K>Ca>Na>Mg (for macro nutrients) and Zn>Fe>Cu (for micro nutrients). Leucine (5.78 g/100 g) and phenylalanine (5.62 g/100 g) were the highest recorded indispensable amino acids (IAA). The highest dispensable amino acids (DAA) recorded were glutamic acid (11.18 g/100 g) and arginine (10.98 g/100 g). Content values for most of the IAA compared well with FAO/WHO reference values. Water melon seeds in the study area contain high levels of key nutrients. It is recommended that awareness rising is undertaken to encourage both the production and consumption of water melon by both humans and livestock.

Key words: Water melon, mineral elements, amino acids and Zuru






Full-text options


Share this Article


Online Article Submission
• ejmanager.com




ejPort - eJManager.com
Refer & Earn
JournalList
About BiblioMed
License Information
Terms & Conditions
Privacy Policy
Contact Us

The articles in Bibliomed are open access articles licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.