Nutritional quality of Corn Flour supplemented with Acheta Gossypii

Local staple diets in Nigeria are mostly corn based which are usually protein deficient .Corn flour was made from fermented and dried yellow corn and supplemented with 5 and 10% proteins of crickets. The diets were analyzed for proximate composition, energy, amino acid composition, swelling index, wettability, bulk density, solubility, and water holding capacity as well as sensory characteristics on a 7 point Hedonic scale and the maintaining quality of each diet using microbial assay for refrigerated and non refrigerated conditions. Also, weight performance (WP), total feed intake (TFI), total nitrogen consumed (TNC), protein efficiency ratio (PER), net protein utilization (NPU), net protein ratio (NPR) as well as the serum levels of alkaline phosphatase (ALP), aspartate transaminase (AST) alanine transaminase (ALT), total protein (TP) and albumin (Al) were determined in animal models (albino rats) using 5% and 10% corn and soy supplemented diet as standard diets.Supplementations of corn flour with cricket have been found to improve the nutritional quality of corn and may therefore be able to solve the problem of malnutrition.