IPB Students Found Technology to Produce Low Calorie Sugar

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Students from the Bogor Agricultural Institute (IPB) found technology to produce low calorie liquid sugar with main raw material derived from cassava peelings.

"Liquid sugar from cassava peelings contains less energy, less than a third of the energy contained in sugar cane,” said Farauq Arrahman one of four pioneering students that manufactured liquid sugar from cassava, in Bogor, on Thursday, September 3.

Farauq, along with three other friends, Galina Nugraha, Putri Vionita and Abdul Aziz, came up with the idea at IPB’s Student Creativity Week (PKM).

Farauq said the process of making liquid sugar from cassava peelings is quite practical. Only by pulping cassava peels that have been soaked for three days and collect the starch.

The next step is to incorporate alpha-amylase enzyme, an enzyme similar to pancreas and salivary enzymes that functions to break starch chains into saccharides. After a number of other steps, including heating, cooling, and adding some more additives the last step resulted liquid sugar with lower calorie count than cane sugar.

"Liquid sugar cassava peel contains 106 kcal of energy per 100 grams, while cane sugar contains 364 kcal per 100 grams," said Farauq. "So, this liquid sugar can be consumed by diabetics," he said.

Aziz said Indonesia is one of the five largest cassava producing country in the world. The Central Bureau of Statistics said in 2014 declared, national cassava production reached 23.46 million tons. Cassava processing produced about 15-20 percent waste from the tuber weight.

"It's a huge potential if we are able to produce liquid sugar from cassava peel why we have to rely on imports of sugar," he said.

ANTARA