How Tigernuts are grown in Africa

                                                                                                           

Air drying tigernuts

Tigernuts are of the sedge family and are known scientifically as cyperus esculentum . tigernus are known by a lot of names: tigernusse, erdmandel, erdmandeln,chufa (spanish), Aya (Hausa, Nigeria), Tigernoten(dutch).

Tigernuts are edible little tubers found in the wild as grass or cultivated as a crop. 

 These tubers have been found to have formed part of paleo diet, so probably they were wild until humans domesticated them.

Tigernuts are believed to have originated from Ancient Egypt. Presently the major cultivators of the crop in Africa are: Egypt,Mali, Niger,Nigeria,Ghana.

      

Fresh tigernuts

Tigernuts are propagated by their tubers, the tubers are sown into freshly loosened ridges. The soil condition has to be loose, well aerated sandy loamy soil. Tigernuts do not require much water to grow. In Niger, areas that grow tigernuts have very little rainfalls in the growing season. The tigernuts growing season is just about 6months long, from April (planting) to around november or december (harvesting). A single tigernut tuber can produce a tigernut crop with up 20 - 30 tubers. Harvesting is done by harvester.

Freshly harvested tigernuts have water content of up to 20% and this means that they are very perishable. To increase the shelf life of the nuts (tubers really) they are sundried or airdried for up to 3months outside on tarpulins in the open field, to reduce the moisture content to at least 7%. 

 Drying tigernuts enable them to be stored for up to 1 year without spoilage. This also helps farmers to sell the crop to buyers outside their locality or country.

After the drying phase comes the destoning process. When the tigernuts are dug up from the soil, a lot of stones and attached soil come up with the nuts. When the nuts are washed the soil goes off some of the stones may still remain with the nuts. Also the sun drying process can also get the tigernuts mixed up with a lot of foreign materials. All of these must be removed during the cleaning and destoning process.


Then comes the bagging phase where the tigernuts are packed in 50kg or 100kg capacity bags and stored in warehouses. The ideal storage condition: cool, dry place without odours. If possible walls should be lined with craft paper and the bags kept on pallets.