PROCESSING APPROACHES TO OPTIMISING RAW MATERIALS AND END PRODUCT QUALITY IN THE PRODUCTION OF CASSAVA FLOURS

In Latin America, cassava is making the transition from a starchy staple food to a raw material for food, feed and other industries. Major development work has taken place in the natural and artificial drying of cassava root chips for animal feed to produce flour for the food industry. Major product quality concerns during the development of these products have been the chemical composition (nutrition), microbial counts (hygiene standards for food products), mycotoxins, and cyanogenic potential of the final or intermediary products. This paper includes a review of research findings in the area of cassava drying regarding these parameters. Some results emerging from recent cassava drying research at the Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) are presented for the first time.