ACTA Scientiarum Polonorum

Material and methods. About 1.0 kg dried seeds of groundnut was involved in the analysis of the sample. It was divided into three parts for the dry, dry cooked and dry roasted samples. Defatted groundnut seeds were used using standard analytical method in which chloroform/methanol (2:1 v/v) was used as extraction solvent. Ion exchange chromatography method was used in the analysis of the amino acid composition using the Technicon Sequential Multisample (TSM) Amino Acid Analyser. Various methods were used to determine the quality parameters of the protein. Other parameters were the predicted protein efficiency ratio (P-PER), essential amino acid index (EAAI) and the isoelectric point (pI). The statistical analysis was also carried out.

Results. Total amino acid was as follows: (g/100 g crude protein, cp): 83.5 (raw seeds, Rs), 85.9 (cooked seeds, Cs) and 66.8 (roasted seeds, Rt.s) with corresponding essential amino acids as: 39.4 or 47.2% (Rs), 38.3 or 44.6% (Cs) and 30.0 or 44.9% (Rt.s). Predicted protein efficiency ratios were 2.55 (Rs), 3.00 (Cs) and 2.31 (Rt.s) and essential amino acid index of 1.18 (Rs), 1.08 (Cs) and 0.83 (Rt.s). Cooking enhanced the amino acid levels of Asp, Ser, Glu, Pro, Arg, Ala, Cys, Val, Leu and Phe. The following essential amino acids were reduced by both cooking and roasting: Lys (15.9-27.6%), His (4.23-
-16.5%), Thr (40.1-60.6%), Met (38.0-63.4%) and Ile (13.3-31.8%). All the parameters between Rs/Cs and most of the parameters between Rs/Rt.s were significantly different at r_=0.05.