Abstract

A survey of East African starch industries revealed that the market had two major botanical sources of starches; maize and cassava and that maize starch dominated the market with most of the starch being imported. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and rapid visco analyser (RVA) were used in the determination of starch thermal and pasting properties respectively. Maize starch was found to have a gelatinisation temperature of 69.90°C while cassava starches ranged from 63.60 to68.54°C. Maize starch recorded a retrogradation percentage of 39.85% while cassava starches ranged from 14.26 to 18.05%. NASE10 and Kenya tapioca had setback viscosities of 494.50 and 492.00 mPa s respectively, while maize starch had a setback viscosity of 354.00 mPa s. Maize starch had a higher pasting temperature of 76.7°C compared to cassava starches with a range of 65.23 to 70.22°C. With these variations in the starch functional properties, there exists various utilisation potential in different food and non food industries in the region.

Key words: East Africa, starches, market, functional properties.