Nutritional Analysis of Dioscorea alata

Dioscorea alata belongs to Dioscoreaceae family. D. alata is a climbing plant with glabrous leaves and twining stems which coil readily around a stake (Udensi et al., 2008).This yam is an edible starchy tuber which is of cultural, economic and nutritional importance in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world (Coursey, 1967). The specific objectives of the study were; to extract and determine the starch content per 100g of dry sample, determine percentage lipid content, percentage protein content, percentage water content, percentage ash content and the mineral content of D. alata tubers. This study was done to quantitatively determine the nutrient composition of Dioscorea alata. The nutrient composition of Dioscorea alata tubers was determined using alkaline starch extraction method, Soxhlet method for determination of fat, kjeldahl method for protein determination, oven method for moisture content determination, Muffle furnace for ash content, and atomic absorption spectrophotometry for mineral ions. The average moisture content of D. alata tubers was 72.53% (64.00% to 85.94%). The average ash content was 2.85%. The average fat content was 0.245 (0.076% to 0.414%).