Nutritional Composition and Antimicrobial Activity of Coconut Water Against Selected Gastrointestinal Pathogens
[1]
Patience Fowoyo, Biosciences Department, Baze University, Abuja, Nigeria.
[2]
Juliana Alamu, Biosciences Department, Salem University, Abuja, Nigeria.
There is an increasing resistance to routinely used antibiotics thus fuelling the search for new antimicrobials with great potentials. This study determined the nutritional composition and examined the antagonistic activity of coconut water both from young and matured coconuts against selected gastrointestinal pathogens. Coconut was purchased from three different markets in Lokoja, Kogi State. The coconut water had the following ranges for nutrients present; moisture content (95.44% - 96.36%), ash content (8.42% - 26.05%), lipid content (0.06% - 0.15%), protein content (6.30% - 14.76%) and carbohydrate content (59.10% - 85.22%). The different sugar analysed had the following content range; sucrose (3.23% - 11.53%), inverted sugar (24.84% - 40.87%) and reducing sugar (32.35% -52.30%). Vitamin C content was the highest with a range of 2.25 - 5.56 while vitamin E was the lowest with the range of 0.002%- 0.006% in the coconut water samples examined. The pH of coconut water ranged from 4.20 - 5.76 and TTA ranged from 1.10 - 3.76. The antimicrobial activity of coconut water from young coconut against gastrointestinal pathogens was found to be the highest as compared to the matured coconut. This phenomenon may be attributed to the fact that the potency of the antimicrobials in coconut water (lauric acid and peptides) may have reduced substantially subsequent to maturation.
Coconut Water, Antimicrobial Potency, Nutritional Content, Gastrointestinal Pathogens
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