1.0 Introduction
Cassava starch is a whitish powdery material which is used in the food, pharmaceutical pulp and paper and textile industries.
In the past, cassava starch was mainly used as a staple food by some tribes in Nigeria and for domestic laundry purposes. However, attention has been drawn to its industrial used in recent years. Among its industrial uses one as thickener or paste in food industry syrup in the pharmaceutical industry and for textile sizing in the textile industry. Based on these industrial uses of cassava, starch has been motivated into researching on the mechanization of its production process and also to upgrade the traditional production technology.
Primarily, cassava starch is produced by wet willing of fresh cassava roots but in some countries such as Thailand, it is produced from dry cassava chips. Starch is the main constituent of cassava. About 25% starch may be obtained from mature, good quality tubers. About 60% starch may be obtained from dry cassava chips and about 10% dry pulp may be obtained per 100kg of cassava roots.
Starch makes up the nutritive reserve of many plants; during the growing season, the green leave collects solar energy. In plants with tuberous roots, this energy is transported as a sugar solution down to the tubers, and it is down there, the sugar is converted to starch in form of tiny granules occupying most of the cell interior.
The conversion of sugar to starch takes place by means of enzymes. Then, the following spring, enzymes are also responsibility for the re-conversion of starch to sugar, which is transported upwards as energy for the growing plant.
Fresh tubers are processed during season and dry chips during the off-season in some countries.
All green plants utilize the light energy to produce glucose from carbon dioxide by means of photosynthesis. Plant usually store this glucose or their energy as starch granules in plastids like chloroplasts and particularly angioplasty during the closing stages of their growing season, this starch usually mount up in branches of tree close to the buds. In addition, the fruits, seeds, rhizomes and also the tubers stock up the starch for use to prepare for the subsequent growing season.
Starch is considered to be preserved sugar or energy for plants, glucose molecules bind to starch through easily hydrolyzed alpha bonds.
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