EFFECT OF PROCESSING ON AMINO ACIDS CONTENTS OF FOUR SPECIES OF THE FAMILY CUCURBITACEAE

This study was carried out to evaluate the effect of boiling on amino acids contents of the fruits of four species of the family Cucurbitaceae which were Cucurbita maxima D, Cucurbita pepo L, Cucurbita moschata and Lagenaria siceraria variety supreme court. In this study, fresh fruit of the four species were subjected to conventional processing technique which is boiling as well as drying. The dry and boiled fruits were evaluated for essential and nonessential amino acids content as well as total amino acids. Amino acids profile of boiled and dry fruits showed the presence of eight essential and nine non essential amino acids. The four species recorded a considerable amount of proline as follows: L. s. uncooked (370 mg/100gm), C. mo. uncooked (318 mg/100gm) L. s. cooked (258.8 mg/100gm), C. p. uncooked (232mg/100gm) and C. p. cooked (208mg/100gm). The highest total amount of amino acids of boiled fruits was recorded in Lagenaria siceraria (4977.6mg/100gm) followed by Cucurbita pepo (2870.1mg/100gm) where as the lowest was recorded in Cucurbita maxima (1427mg/100gm).  Glutamic acid was the most abundant amino acid in the four species, the highest amount of this amino acid (1367mg/100gm) was recorded by Cucurbita pepo untreated fruits.  In general all Cucurbita species recorded a decrease in amino acids of treated fruits except proline in C. ma. and alanine in C. p. whereas in L. s. there was an increase in six amino acids which were aspartic acid, threonine, serine, glutamic acid, glycine and lysine