Quantitative descriptive analysis and instrumental textural data, for Gari/Eba, at IITA, Nigeria.

Gari is a significant, versatile, granular, and convenient product from cassava roots in the West Africa sub-region. The granular product is popular in West African countries due to its long shelf life and ease of preparation. It can be consumed by soaking in water or turned into Eba, produced by briefly cooking and stirring gari in hot water until homogenous dough is formed. The acceptability of Eba by consumers has been reported to be driven by sensory attributes such as appearance, colour, taste, aroma, and other textural parameters such as smoothness, mouldability, hardness, and stretchability. It is essential to establish the relationship between instrumental and quantitative descriptive sensory scores to present instrumental measurement as a mid-throughput and less costly alternative to the sensory approach, which is subjective. Previous studies have established correlations between the sensory and instrumental measurements for sensory textural attributes of Eba, with a low to medium correlation coefficient. In the current study, the instrumental hardness correlated significantly (p<0.001) and positively with sensory hardness (r= 0.8329) and mouldability (r= 0.8085) but negatively with sensory stickiness (r= -0.7355). Sensory stickiness correlated positively and significantly (p<0.001) with instrumental springiness (r= 0.6753) and cohesiveness but negatively with instrumental gumminess (r= -0.5470). The linear regression coefficients have been substantially improved using a new set of cassava genotypes.