Umudike Journal of Engineering and Technology

The physical properties of two varieties of fresh cocoyam cormels (NXs 001 and NXs 002) obtained from National Root Crops Research Institute, Umudike were determined. The physical properties of these cocoyam varieties will be useful for the design of cocoyam processing machines. Measured properties include: moisture content, size (length, width and thickness), geometric mean diameter, sphericity, weight, surface area, bulk density, true density, porosity and angle of repose. Results obtained showed that the cocoyam variety NXs 001 has higher average moisture content of 57.81% while the variety NXs 002 has the average value of 46.97%. The average length, width and thickness of the varieties NXs 001 and NXs 002 were (10.06cm, 4.74cm, 4.16cm) and (9.97cm, 3.66cm, 3.09cm) respectively. The variety NXs 001 has higher average values in geometric mean diameter 3.90cm, sphericity 0.80, mass 127.66g, surface area 45.37cm² and porosity 52.4%. A comparative evaluation of the two varieties of cocoyam for the above properties revealed that only the differences in the means of length, sphericity, weight and true density were not statistically significant at the 5% level, while the differences in the means of the other properties were all found to be statistically significant at 5% level.