Effects of water-stress on the fungal growth and quality of vegetable amaranth in storage.

Amaranthus crucentus are usually short lived annual crops which probably originated in the Andcan region of South America. An experiment was conducted to determine the effects of water stress on the microbial growth and quality of vegetable Amaranth. Analysis of variance showed that microbial growth was significant at 17.63% as well as moisture stress at 128.1%. However nitrogen composition and water content was not significant at the 5% probability level. A polyethylene bag recorded the highest microbial growth 38.33% in comparison with a paper bag 14.67%, when those exposed had the lowest microbial growth 7.33%. Amaranthus crucentus packaged with polythene bags recorded the highest microbial growth, followed by those packaged with paper bags while those exposed had the lowest. The microbes observed were mainly Aspergillus species. The result of the investigation showed that on the first day, vegetable Amaranth packaged with paper bag had the highest weight loss of 17.02 g in comparison with the exposed sample of 14.08 g, while those packaged with polyethylene bags had the lowest weight loss of 0.33. Similar trends were observed on the third and sixth days respectively. Investigation showed that the exposed samples recorded the highest nitrogen composition of 0.06% followed by paper bag 0.030%, while polythene had the lowest 0.028%. However, vegetables packaged with polythene bags had the highest water content, followed by paper bag 62.25%, while the exposed recorded the lowest water content of 43.96%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]