Development and Quality Evaluation of a Functional Food From Cultured Milk Supplemented With Baobab (Adansonia Digitata L.) Fruit Pulp

Abstract

The baobab tree exists in areas characterized by high poverty levels, increased food insecurity and low resilience to climatic changes. In such areas, the tree is vital in complementing staple diets of the rural poor by serving as an alternative source of nutrition during lean seasons. However, in East Africa particularly Kenya, parts of the tree remain underutilized compared to other West- African communities. This study therefore assessed the status of utilization of baobab tree in Kenya with an overall aim to develop and evaluate the quality of a selected functional food that will serve to increase utilization of the fruit part of the tree. The selected study site was Makueni County, a drought prone area with baobab trees being vastly dominant. A survey was conducted using semi structured questionnaires for data collection on production, consumption, processing, and marketing of baobab products involving 250 purposively sampled households, using a cross-sectional study design. Five Focus Group Discussions and ten Key Informant Interviews were also conducted to triangulate the data obtained from the survey. Descriptive statistics for mean, frequency and percentages were used to analyze the data. The survey findings indicated that the tree was accessible to majority of the respondents with the fruit pulp being widely consumed by 72% of the respondents. Small scale processing of pulp/seed sweets was done by 47% of the respondents and at least 8875 KGs of this commodity was processed annually. Rural processors however face several challenges such as financial constraints (41%), limited number of customers (25%) and limited market space (12%) all which account for minimum returns of less than KES 5000 (USD 41.21) per month. Various products processed from the baobab fruit i.e., jam, toffees, juice, pulp/seed sweets and fruit powder were identified including those prepared traditionally at household level. However, incorporation of baobab fruit pulp in innovative formulations remains limited. Hence, a new innovative product was developed form the baobab fruit pulp through...