OUATTARA Gninfanni Silvère^1,, KONE Salimata², BAN Ouéméla Venance Allais³, KOFFI Kouadio Ernest⁴

Agriculture occupies an important place in the economy of Ivory Coast, employing more than 70% of the population. In addition to cocoa, cashew is the second crop for which Ivory Coast has ranked first worldwide since 2015, with an estimated production of 702,510 Tons. The local processing rate increased from 1% (4,157 Tons) in 2008 to 9% (66,800 Tons) in 2018. This processing essentially consists of shelling cashew nuts to extract the kernels. Therefore, the objective of this work is to contribute to the processing of cashew kernels by producing cashew almond paste with a good nutritional value. The biochemical and sensory characteristics evaluated are compared to those of the commercial peanut paste. The results showed that the cashew almond paste is rich in protein, lipids and carbohydrates. The lipids of cashew almond paste (50.80 g/100g ± 0.41) are higher than those of the commercial peanut paste (40 g/100g ± 0.5). The proteins (18.90 g/100g ± 0.20) and carbohydrates (26.33 g/100g ± 0.25) of the cashew almond paste are almost identical to the proteins (25.1 g/100g ± 0.3) and carbohydrates (24.7±0.45) of the commercial peanut paste. This cashew almond paste is rich in minerals (3.41 g/100g) with in particular potassium (570.84 mg/100g ± 5.15), sodium (268.28 mg/100g ± 2.1) magnesium (242.66 mg/100g ± 2.5) and calcium (41.96 mg/100g ± 0.43). The sensory evaluation shows that the cashew almond paste has a good smell and a substantially identical taste to the taste of the commercial peanut paste.

cashew nut, paste, nutritional value, sensory evaluation