+44-7897-074717Eleazu, C.O., Amadi, C.O. and Iwo, G.A.
The extractable sugars and nutritive quality of 10 elite accessions of ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe) from National Root Crops Research Institute, Umudike and Nigeria were investigated. The percentage reducing sugar (RS) contents of the ginger accessions were observed to be low and they ranged from 0.28 to 0.65 (%) with UG II 7-24 having the highest amounts of reducing sugar(0.64±0.00%) while UGII 3-04 had the least (0.43±0.06%). In addition, UGII 5-18 had the highest amounts of total soluble carbohydrates/sugars (TSC) (53.00±1.41%) while UGII 5-35 had the least (33.80±0.42%). All the accessions of ginger contained significant quantities of minerals, nitrogen and oleoresin. Correlation analysis that was carried out, showed that oleoresin correlated positively with RS (r = 0.110), TC (r = 0.359), magnesium (r = 0.22), phosphorous (r = 0.58), sodium (r = 0.45) and potassium (r = 0.72), negatively with nitrogen (r = - .08) and insignificant with calcium (r = 0.02). Results show that these accessions of ginger could possess considerable economic, nutritive and medicinal potentials. Finally, the oleoresins in ginger could contribute to the potassium contents of ginger
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