Description

Cassava is the most important root crop in Nigeria. Apart from being a staple crop in both rural and urban household’s cassava is a major source of income to cassava farmers and processors in the rural areas.

Cassava alone contributes about 45% of agricultural GDP in Nigeria for food or domestic purposes but its industrial processing and utilization has been very limited.

Currently, the country produces about 40,000,000 tons of the cassava tubers annually. Fufu flour is one of the products that can be produced from cassava tubers.

Fufu Flour is fermented wet-paste made from cassava. Fufu is very rich in carbohydrate and has smooth texture. It is ranked next to gari as an indigenous food of most Nigerians in the south. Traditionally, it is produced in the wet form with moisture content of 40-50 per cent with a offensive characteristic odour. This makes the product highly perishable with a short shelf life compared with gari and lafun, which are in granular form with moisture content below 10 per cent.

In order to increase it shelf live, improved fufu production process has been developed. The improved production process is starts by peeling of roots, washing, cutting into pieces and steeping in water to ferment for 3–4 days. The fermented mash is pounded or simply washed over a fine sieve to remove fibre and the water expelled from the starch extract by pressing through muslin cloth to produce fufu.

The major raw material required to produce fufu flour is cassava tubers. The fresh cassava tuber should be free from microbial or insect damage and without serious bruising or cuts. It should be processed within two days of harvest to prevent deterioration and loss of quality.

Below is the production process of fufu flour

Sorting

The roots are sorted to select wholesome roots for processing.

Weighing

The sorted roots are weighed

Peeling

The roots are peeled to remove the peels

Washing

The peeled cassava roots are washed thoroughly

Soaking

The roots are soaked in clean water over a long period of time

Pulping and Sifting

The softened roots are pulped with sifted using a substantial quantity of water

Sedimentation

The slurry is allowed to sediment under gravity over a period of time

Dewatering

The thick slurry obtained remowing the upper layer of supernatant liquid is dewatered to reduce its moisture content.

Granulating

The “cake” is mechanically reduced in size to produce fine granules

Drying

The granulated fufu cake is dried to yield grits of about 10% moisture content

Sieving

The dried grits is subjected to size separation

Milling
The course particles are collected and milled to desired particle size.

Blending
The original sievate is blended with the milled coarse particles.

Packaging

The fufu is packaged appropriately.

There is high demand for fufu in Nigeria. Fufu is consumed as human food and its consumption transcends ethic, religious and social barrier.

The annual national demand for fufu is estimated at 350,000 tonnes while the national supply estimate is about 300,000.

In recent times due to the other products {Cassava Starch, Garri and Flour} that can gotten from Cassava tubers ,the production of fufu in Nigeria has witnessed a reduction in volume thereby prompting a shift in the demand-supply equilibrium in favour of fufu producers.

The supply gap has been identified to continue to expand as the population of the country which is estimated to be 165 million continues to grow at 3.5% per annum. Also the rural – urban drift in the country would help to deepen the market for fufu.