Vol. 10, Issue 10 (2021)

Author(s):
Aluru Madhuri, Suman Thamburaj, R Jaganmohan and Dr. R Vidyalakshmi

Abstract:
Corn flour which acts as a major adulterant in cassava flour during the manufacturing of tapioca (cassava) sago plays a major role in effecting the farmers economically. Nutritionally, there is a considerable difference between cassava and corn flour. Even though, there are some available microscopic methods to detect adulteration of different flours, ATR-FTIR was recognized as a beneficial tool for detecting adulteration of corn flour in cassava flour. Cassava flour, Cornflour, and different percentages of spiked cassava flours (10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%) were subjected to proximate in parallel with FT-IR spectroscopy. The spectroscopy results showed that Cassava flour was detected from corn flour by the nearly disappearing of specific bands at 1743.65 cm^-1, 1643.35 cm^-1, 1544.98 cm^-1 which are present in corn flour. On increasing the adulteration, the intensity of peaks at these specific bands was kept on increasing. As FTIR is a fast and non-destructive technique, it can be employed in finding adulteration of tapioca sago.