Nutritional composition of watermelon seeds

Abstract

Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) a fruit crop, is herbaceous creeping plant belonging to the family Cucurbitaceous. It is mainly propagated by seeds and thrives best in warm areas. It can be grown along the coastal areas of Ghana, the forest zone and especially along riverbeds in the Northern Savannah areas. Watermelon is a highly purchased fruit because of its highly nutritious nature, and it thirst quenching ability. Watermelon is purchased on the daily by consumers, the seeds of these watermelon is just thrown away and tossed in the trash can leading to high wastage of these seeds in the country. The objectives of this study is to determine the proximate composition of watermelon seeds and to determine some selected mineral composition of watermelon seeds. Two varieties of the watermelon seed were used; Sweet Baby and Karoka varieties. For the proximate analysis, the moisture content, protein, fat, carbohydrate, crude ash and fibre were determined. The minerals determined were Phosphorus, Potassium, Sodium and Calcium. From the experimental results, it is possible to state that these seeds which were analyzed contained significant quantities of the various nutrients being analyzed. It was observed that for all the parameters measured, there was a statistical difference between the proximate and mineral composition for the two seed varieties except the Fat content which there was no statistical difference between the two varieties. Potassium was also found to be the highest mineral in the minerals investigated in this experiment with Potassium contents 33500.2±0.10 and 38100.6±0.10 for Sweet Baby and Karoka varieties respectively. The findings from this study showed that the watermelon seed varieties; Sweet baby and Karoka were good sources of various nutrients. These nutrients were present in high quantities.