News Archive - 2009

Explainer: Cassava in Katine

Annie Kelly looks at the importance of cassava to farmers in Uganda

http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine/2009/mar/23/cassava-explainer

Posted by FARM-Africa on March 23, 2009 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Comments

As someone who has had to deal with the health effects of newly introduced high cyanide cassava, I am interested to know the cyanide content of the strains in Katine. Also a more exact description of the processing methods would be helpful. Dear Dr Cliff Thank you for your question. As you will probably know most cassava varieties contain precursors to cyanide, i.e. when you crush the fresh roots for instance when you eat them, cyanide is released. Some varieties contain more (‘bitter varieties’) and some less (‘sweet’ varieties). This distinction is only relevant when people eat fresh cassava, without boiling. In East Africa, people don’t eat any fresh cassava, for this reason. Simply boiling the cassava destroys the precursors. Drying also destroys the precursors. In Nakasongola, where FARM-Africa initially introduced this variety of cassava it is dried and ground into flour. I hope that this information is useful, Best regards, Ngaio

Posted by Dr Julie Cliff on June 5, 2009 3:12 PM

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