Nutritional quality and physico-chemical changes during breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) natural fermentation

Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) being a nutritious, staple food with high economic importance is usually subjected to fermentation in order to preserve it, improve its flavour and digestibility, amongst other benefits. In order to provide information on the nutritional and physicochemical changes during the fermentation of breadfruit, this study was carried out. Breadfruits were subjected to solid and submerged state fermentation for 120 h (5 days) and analysed at intervals (24 h) for physicochemical and nutritional changes: pH, total titrable acidity, moisture content, mineral content, protein, total starch, total soluble sugar and total reducing sugar. The protein content increased during the first 72 h and decreased during the last 48 h of the solid state fermentation. There was a 51.67% decrease in the moisture content, 0.68% decrease in total soluble sugar, 45.90% decrease in the total reducing sugar and 41.35% decrease in the starch content of the breadfruit at 96 h of solid state fermentation. There was also an increase in the total titrable acidity content of the fermenting breadfruit during solid state fermentation and during submerged fermentation. For minerals, potassium and sodium increased at 72 and 48 h, respectively. The submerged state fermentation process caused a decrease in the concentration of potassium (3.69-1.35 mg/100 g) and iron (0.82-0.72 mg/100 g) after 120 h. The contents of minerals in mg/100 g were 0.07 for manganese, 0.76 for iron, 0.004 for copper and 0.04 for zinc at 48 h for submerged fermented breadfruit. In conclusion, solid state fermentation gave breadfruit more desirable chemical parameters than submerged state fermentation.