- Sweet potatoes are a highly nutritious food group, they continue to gain interest on account of the diversity of the tuber and the number of products that can be developed from the tuber itself. This is true on the global scale, however; locally the amount of such products on market is minimal. Such should be available to cater to gluten intolerant and celiac disease niches and also exhaust the favorable SP production cycle. The overall purpose of this study is to determine the best variety and treatment for flour production, for use in the formulation of a sweet potato based instant porridge. Together these parameters determined that the ideal mode of treatment for flour production was fermentation in that it exhibited the least nutritive reductive effect across all varieties.The most ideal treatment was fermentation in that amongst the analyzed parameters; the greatest nutrient retention was observed for fermented samples. Tsumaya was observed to produce favorable samples for all treatments. Sensory evaluation established that fermentation was a favored pretreatment option whilst Victoria, Tsumaya and Chingovha were amongst the popular varieties and as such should be formulated into sweet potato based instant porridge.

Keywords : Water and Oil Holding Capacity, Emulsification Stability, Acceptability.