IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/aesjfr/405310.html

Chemical Composition of Common Seaweeds from the Kenya Coast

Author

Listed:
  • Mwalugha, Heltan
  • Wakibia, Joseph
  • Kenji, Glaston
  • Mwasaru, Mwanjala

Abstract

The gross nutritional profile of 34 seaweed species from three sites (Mkomani, Kibuyuni and Mtwapa) in coastal Kenya were studied. The crude fat, crude protein, crude fibre and crude ash were determined by the standard AOAC methods while the nitrogen-free extract (NFE) was calculated by weight difference of the chemical components. The chemical constituents of the seaweeds varied significantly among the algal divisions, species, months and sites (p<0.05). The major chemical components was the NFE with a mean value of 42.09 ± 0.83% dry weight (DW) followed by crude ash (31.94 ± 0.78% DW), crude fibre (14.08 ± 0.26% DW), crude protein (10.09 ± 0.26% DW), whereas the least component was crude fat with a mean value of 1.81 ± 0.04% DW (p<0.05). The crude protein levels were positively correlated with nitrogen content and in crude fibre and negatively with NFE, crude fat and crude ash (p<0.05). The findings on the gross nutritional profile of the seaweeds in this study could be used as a basis for more advanced research on nutritional information guideline and as potential resources for seaweed-based products for improved human and animal nutrition.

Suggested Citation

  • Mwalugha, Heltan & Wakibia, Joseph & Kenji, Glaston & Mwasaru, Mwanjala, 2015. "Chemical Composition of Common Seaweeds from the Kenya Coast," Journal of Food Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 4(6).
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:aesjfr:405310
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/405310/files/48679-187591-1-PB.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:aesjfr:405310. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.ccsenet.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.