EVALUATION OF VINEGAR PRODUCTION PROPERTIES OF Garcina kola AND Artocarpus heterophyllus

Vinegar can be defined as an acetic acid liquid produced through fermentation from a suitable raw material of agricultural origin which contains starch or sugars as a carbon source also fit for human consumption.This work is aimed at determining the vinegar production capability of Garcina kola(Bitter Kola)and Artocarpus heterophyllus(Jack fruit). The bitter kola and jack fruit fermentation was carried out with added inoculant and naturally by indigenous inoculant for seven days at 30oCfor alcoholic fermentation and 28 day acetic fermentation where some of the samples were boiled and one of the groups was subjected addition of inoculant while the other contains no added inoculant. Proximate analysis of the produced vinegar was also carried out to have an insight on its nutritional quality. Results showed that the range of the pH of the vinegar was between pH 2.6-2.9 for the bitter kola, 3.20-3.73 for jackfruit with peel and pH 3.20-3.40 for jackfruit without peel. The range of acetic acid yield of the vinegar produced is between 0.80%-2.30% for bitter kola, 0.80-1.92% for jackfruit with peel and 0.98-1.92% for jackfruit without peel. The range of alcohol content was between 0-0.5. The specific gravity ranges from 1.001-1.083. The suspected organism present in the samples is Acetobacter sp. Sample 4A Natural showed to poses the highest colony count of Acetic acid bacteria with 3.49logcfu/ml. The jackfruit with peel vinegar had the highest protein, ash and total solid content with 2.45%, 1.5% and 17.3%. The jackfruit without peel vinegar had the highest moisture content with 88.36%. Generally, the substrates used which includes bitterkola and jackfruit showed to be able to be used in vinegar production and contain some nutritional properties although optimization process needs to be carried out to increase production of vinegar with better qualities.