Identification of commercial milling techniques to produce high sugar, high fiber, high protein, and high galactomannan gum fractions from Prosopis pods

Economic assessment of production of flour from Prosopis alba and P. pallida pods for human food applications.

“…The mesocarp is the economically useful product that is converted to a light-yellow, fine (80-100 mesh), 8-9% protein, 40-55% sugar flour. The endocarp which does not possess flavor, sugar components and very little protein may be useful due to its high dietary fiber content (Saunders et al, 1986). We define the pod flour recovery factor as the mass of flour produced divided by the mass of pods input to the process.…”

“…While Prosopis flour and wheat flour have approximately equal energy and protein contents, unlike wheat flour which is taste neutral and which is used for its textural properties in stimulating volume increase, Prosopis flour does not have gluten (Saunders et al, 1986) and does not stimulate volume increases. As Prosopis flour has a taste and aroma in the same general class as cafe/cacao/cinnamon/mocha, we believe that Prosopis flour will achieve its greatest economic value in flavoring/aroma applications rather than any benefit from textural properties.…”

“…Over the last 15 years, there have been efforts to bring this flour into wide-scale use in contemporary products through dry-milling techniques to produce flours for pastries, coffee substitutes and by water extraction techniques to produce syrups for use in flavoring applications (Meyer, 1984;Saunders et al, 1986;Cruz, 1988Cruz, , 1999Del Valle et al, 1989;Bravo et al, 1994Bravo et al, , 1998Grados & Cruz, 1996;).…”

“…A previous economic analysis of Prosopis flour production from various species (Saunders et al, 1986) assumed a hypothetical and considerably more complicated processing system capable of producing 1000 kg h À1 . In contrast, this study used actual production data from a much simpler set of machinery in the Universidad de Piura (UDEP) pilot plant.…”

<i>Prosopis</i> pods as human food, with special reference to Kenya#

“…Traditionally, dried pods were pounded in a pestle and mortar to produce a coarse flour, or ground using a variety of stone mills (Felger, 1977). Other methods of manual or mechanical grinding have also proved successful for processing Prosopis pods (Meyer et al, 1982;Saunders et al, 1986;Del Valle et al, 1987;Grados and Cruz, 1996). The absence of starch is a limitation to Prosopis flour levels in bread formulations.…”