Assessing financial literacy and food and nutritional security relationship in an African country.

This study investigates the relationship between rural Ghanaian household food and nutrition security and financial literacy. We used the endogenous treatment regression (ETR) technique to address the analysis's potential selection bias problem. The findings of our study demonstrated a beneficial relationship between food and nutrition security and financial literacy. According to further studies, the relationship between food security and financial literacy is heterogeneous. Our findings may have some ramifications for promoting food and nutritional security while preserving rural development methods.

Effect of COVID-19 on Household Food Insecurity and Poverty: Evidence from Ghana.

Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and its heavy toll on the global community and humanity, a fierce debate on the pandemic and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) performance nexus has emerged. While the literature on this subject remains highly contested, evidence within the Ghanaian contest is sparse. Thus, we present micro-level evidence on how COVID-19 poses a threat to hunger and poverty as SDGs in Ghana. Precisely, we examined the effect of COVID-19 on households' food insecurity and poverty and further analysed gender and locational sub-samples for differential effects. Data on 3905 households were obtained via concurrent online survey and telephone interviews. The results indicate that, on several occasions, a significant number of the sampled households (57.76%) did not get enough food to eat due to the pandemic. The proportion of households that went on several times without clean water for home use and access medicines/medical treatments were 50.52% and 52.22%, respectively. About 60.72% of the sampled households affirmed that, on several times, they did not have enough income due to the pandemic. At the same time, the share of households that suffered food insecurity due to the pandemic was 69.04%. Instrumenting for COVID-19 using distance to the affected communities, we find that a standard deviation increase in COVID-19 is associated with a rise of 0.232 and 0.289 standard deviations in poverty and food insecurity, respectively. Our results are robust to alternative estimation approaches to addressing the endogeneity of COVID-19 and other sensitivity checks. We conclude that Ghana would need to develop a new spectrum of gender- and location-sensitive policies that engender social inclusion as a conduit to expediate the attainment of zero poverty and hunger. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11205-021-02766-9.

Sonication, osmosonication and vacuum-assisted osmosonication pretreatment of Ghanaian garlic slices: Effect on physicochemical properties and quality characteristics.

This work aimed to assess the impact of sonication (US), osmosonication (US + OD) and vacuum-assisted osmosonication (V + US + OD) pretreatments on the quality of Ghanaian garlic prior to relative humidity convective drying. Hence, slices of fresh garlic subjected to US, US + OD and V + US + OD pretreatments were dried and the following assessed: antioxidant activities, total phenolic content (TPC), total flavonoid content (TFC), polyphenol oxidase (PPO) enzyme inactivation, rehydration ratio (RR), drying kinetics, energy consumption, chromatographic fingerprinting, allicin content and Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. V + US + OD pretreatment gave the best results for antioxidant activities, TPC, TFC, RR and PPO enzyme inactivation. It also recorded the shortest drying time and was more energy efficient. Finally V + US + OD pretreatment maintained the chemical integrity of the finished product and recorded the highest content of allicin. A general trend was however observed for all quality parameters assessed for the various pretreatment methods as: V + US + OD > US + OD > US.

Variation in bioactive phytochemicals and sensory attributes of osmosonic convective dried ginger from four African countries.

BACKGROUND: The rhizome of ginger (Zingiber officinale Roscoe) is one of the most patronized spices worldwide and plays an important role in folklore medicine. In this study, we aimed to determine the quality of ginger samples from representative West African (Ghana, Nigeria) and East African (Uganda, Kenya) countries. By that, we also implicitly sought to determine the probable influence of location of cultivation (and the intrinsic growth conditions) on the quality of the samples. The ginger samples were pretreated by osmosonication prior to relative humidity convective drying and analyzed for differences in their metabolomes, total phenolic content (TPC) and total flavonoid content (TFC), antioxidant activities, sensory characteristics and volatile compounds composition (via electronic-nose determination). RESULTS: The outcome of our study showed marked source-dependent differences in the metabolomes of the samples as captured by a metabolomics approach. Based on the findings of the metabolomics study, 6-gingerol content was quantified and found to be higher in the samples of West African origin. Also, the samples from the two West African countries contained higher levels of bioactive phytochemicals as evinced by the results of TPC, TFC, e-nose analysis, and antioxidant activities. They also gave better sensory attributes. CONCLUSION: In summary, for all parameters assessed, and on a country-by-country basis, the general quality trend observed was: Ghana > Nigeria > Uganda > Kenya. All results taken together, our findings at least in part, point to the influence of geographical regions of cultivation on the quality of the ginger rhizomes. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry.

Application of non-thermal pretreatment techniques on agricultural products prior to drying: a review.

BACKGROUND: Most agricultural crops contain high moisture content (80-95% wet basis (wb)) which makes them very susceptible to microbial damage leading to shorter shelf-life and high postharvest losses. The high perishability of these agricultural products requires preservation techniques to prolong their shelf-lives. Drying remains an important component of processing in this regard. Therefore, any pretreatment methods for drying agricultural product that decreases the moisture content and minimizes drying time by conserving the quality of the crop product is of prime significance. This article is a comprehensive review of recent developments of non-thermal pretreatment (NTP) methods. A summary of their significance, emerging and innovative methods of this technology together with its applications and limitations are discussed. This article further examines the environmental impact of NTP techniques. RESULTS: NTP techniques, such as high pressure, ultrasound, pulsed electric field and osmotic dehydration methods are essential operations for pre-dehydration of agricultural products prior to drying. These techniques can avoid the deleterious effects of heat on nutritive value, colour and flavour of agricultural products compared to thermal pretreatments. They also enhance the inactivation of the enzymes, improve energy efficiency and mass transfer, reduce processing time, preserve bioactive compounds, improve drying kinetics and drying rate, minimize enzymatic browning, and enhance product quality. CONCLUSION: These findings will provide a better understanding of different NTP methods and also make available more information for selecting pretreatment techniques for drying of agricultural products. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry.