Abstract
This study was carried out to assess the influence of smoking method on quality attributes of traditional smoked bonga shad fish. Fresh bonga shad fish (100 samples) and smoked bonga shad fish (100 samples) were collected from 20 different processing centres and the fresh samples were smoked with convectional smoking kiln as the control. Laboratory analyses were conducted and each batch was assessed for; proximate and quality analyses. The results obtained show significant variations (p<0.05) for all the proximate composition and quality indices of the smoked bonga shad fish samples. The mean moisture content of fresh bonga shad ranged from 72.96 - 76.89% and that of the smoked bonga shad and control ranged from 10.89 - 14.38% and 8.56 - 10.12%, respectively. The mean protein content of 15.18 - 16.95% was recorded for fresh bonga shad samples and 51.86 - 60.24% and 58.86 - 64.84% for samples of smoked bonga shad. The fat content was determined at 6.46 - 8.84%, while the smoked bonga shad and the control samples were found to have fat content at 16.13 - 20.84% and 12.87 - 17.34%, respectively. The mean pH, thiobarbituric acid value (TBA), total volatile base- nitrogen (TVB-N), TMA, trimethylamine value (TMA) and Free fatty acids values (FFA) values of the smoked bonga shad were lower than the control and the fresh samples. However, all values are within the range of legislative standard.
Key words: Bonga shad, smoking, traditional, proximate, quality indices.
