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SummaryThe water-soluble vitamins (WSV): ascorbic acid (vitamin C), thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3), panthothenic acid (B5), pyridoxine, and pyridoxal (B6), folic acid (B9), biotin(B8) , and B12 are very essential in the diet of humankind. As a result of ever increasing pressures from both consumers and legal enforcers, to specify accurately nutritive compositions of WSV that are present in food materials, many researchers have attempted to fill this niche through the provision of highly sensitive and rapid high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) procedures. In view of the health benefits of WSV, a replete of HPLC methods have been developed for simultaneous determination of their contents in nature and fortified food samples, nutritional supplements, as well as blood plasmas. The rate of losses of these vitamins during food processing and analysis, in addition to their transient dynamics, presents complexities in developing a highly sensitive HPLC procedure for their simultaneous separations and assays. This review critically assesses the different HPLC procedures developed by researchers and available in the open literature for simultaneous determination of water-soluble vitamins (WSV) in dried tropical fruits materials. The study revealed that not a single chromatographic run developed by researchers can simultaneously elute all the WSV at a time. However, the HPLC procedures that are capable of determining all the WSV were coupled with electrospray ionization mass spectroscopy (ESI-MS), thus making the set-up expensive.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is among the poorest region in the world, and undernourishment continues to be a great challenge although this region is endowed with a lot of underutilized plant species (UUPS), which are rich in nutrients, especially micronutrients that are unavailable in staple foods. The potential for fortifying major staple foods with UUPS could be the remedy. This study seeks to provide an overview of the fortification of staple foods with UUPS in Africa and suggest the way forward for effective nutritional and health benefits. The review revealed that fortification of major staple foods has been investigated: maize with grain amaranth, soybean, and moringa; sweet potato with cowpea, sorghum, bambara groundnut, peanut, and moringa; cassava with African yam bean, breadfruit, pigeon pea, bambara groundnut, moringa, and cowpea; and sorghum with pearl millet and green peas. The others were yam with cowpea, plantain, and moringa, while rice was also fortified with baobab pulp and locust pulp. All these studies were found to be acceptable with dense nutritional properties. Specifically, micronutrients such as magnesium, phosphorous, zinc, potassium, and iron were increased while others showed rise in fibre and protein levels. The fortification of staple foods with UUPS has been shown to be promising; however, more designed feeding trials are required to verify the impact on reducing undernutrition and hidden hunger. To do this, it is recommended that rice fortified with UUPS should be targeted as rice is increasingly becoming the leading and important staple food in Africa.

Aloe vera gel has been investigated as possible edible coating to help improve the storage life of fruits after harvest. The study sought to investigate the effect Aloe vera gel coating with or without citric acid pretreatment on the quality of eggplant fruits during low temperature storage and in shelf life. Briefly, eggplants were coated with Aloe vera gel (some fruits were pretreated with citrate prior to the coating) and the changes in physicochemical quality of the fruit measured during storage at 10 °C. After 14 days, however, some fruits were transferred for storage at room temperature until day 18. Coating with Aloe vera decreased moisture loss, and consequently, decreased weight loss and loss of firmness of the fruit. The coating did help maintain the phenolic content, ascorbate levels and antioxidant capacity of the fruit. Pre-treating the fruit with citrate did not improve quality, showing that Aloe vera gel can be applied alone to enhance the storage quality of eggplant fruit. Results obtained from this study shows that Aloe vera gel coating can be useful in extending the postharvest storage life and maintaining the quality of eggplant fruits during low temperature storage.