Abstract

‘‘Agadagidi,’’ a cloudy sweet-sour taste typical African traditional alcoholic beverage is made from overripe bananas or plantains through fermentation and it is mostly consumed by the rural communities in the south western part of Nigeria. The aim of this work is to use selected microorganism\s predominant in this beverage both singly and mixed to assess the nutritional composition of ‘‘Agadagidi’’. Chemical analysis was carried out to confirm the proximate, anti nutrient and mineral content of this fermented beverage. Generally there were reduction in the pH from 6.4 to 3.4 and increase in the total titratable acid from 0.04 to 1.1% after 72 hr of fermentation. The highest value of protein content with significant difference (2.34 ±0.05%) and lowest carbohydrate content was observed with the ‘‘Agadagidi’’ containing L. mesenteroides at 2.29 ± 0.25%. The anti-nutrient composition of ‘‘Agadagidi’ was found to have the lowest phytate and oxalate values of 2.2 ± 0.12 mg/100g and 0.09 ± 0.00 mg/100g with the addition of L. mesenteroides while the mineral composition of ‘‘Agadagidi’’ showed no increase with any of the starters as compared with the spontaneous fermentation. This work has been able to enlighten us that Leuconostoc mesenteroides used as starter culture amongst others had the highest nutritional parameters in ‘‘Agadagidi’’ beverage.

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