N U T R I E N T COMPOSITION OF BANANA SKINS 1

J. G. A R C H I B A L D
Animal Husbandry Dept, University o~ Massachusetts, Amherst

Recently, someone who makes a practice of feeding kitchen and garden refuse
to family livestock sent in an inquiry as to the feeding value of such substances.
F o r most of the items mentioned there is considerable information on record,
but of the lowly banana skin little is known. The information found was in
reports of some analyses made in England and Germany (1, 3), results of one
digestion trial with sheep in Germany (2) and an account of a study of the
pigments of the banana skin from this country (4), all made many years ago.
Therefore, it was decided to make a rather detailed analysis of the skins.
The sample obtained for the work was representative of an entire bunch of the
whole fruit. Care was taken in sampling to separate from the skins and dis-
card any pieces of the pulp which either had been overlooked or had been pur-
posely discarded as too ripe for human consumption.
moisture and carotene were determined in separate portions of the freshly
removed skins; the bulk of the sample then was dried rapidly at approximately
80 ° C. and ground for analysis. The accompanying table gives the values ob-
tained ~ and, for comparison, such other data as are available.
TABLE 1
Composition of banana skins

Honcamp
O u r analyses e$ al. (2) Leuseher (3)

(%) (%) (%)

N a t u r a l m o i s t u r e ..................................................... 83.8 88.0 70.0
Constituents of the dry m a t t e r
P r o t e i n ........................................................................... 6.1 7.7 9.7
E t h e r e x t r a c t ......................................................... 8.7 8.1 13.7
Crude fiber ............................................................... 10.0 8.6 28.7
N i t r o g e n - f r e e e x t r a c t .................................... 63.1 65.1 34.7
T o t a l s u g a r (as i n v e r t s u g a r ) ............ 22.0
T o t a l ash ..................................................................... 12.1 10.5 13.0
Soluble ash ............................................................... 11.7
Calcium ......................................................................... 35
M a g n e s i u m ................................................................ 23
Sodium ........................................................................ trace
P o t a s s i u m .................................................................. 5.72
P h o s p h o r u s ................................................................ 32
S u l f u r ........................................................................... trace
Chlorine ....................................................................... 64
(p.p.m.)
Carotene ..................................................................... 66.0
Received f o r p u b l i e a t l o n J u l y 15, 1949.
C o n t r i b u t i o n 730 of the M a s s a c h u s e t t s A g r i c u l t u r a l E x p e r i m e n t Station.
2 Most of the analyses r e p o r t e d were m a d e in the S t a t e F e e d Control L a b o r a t o r y u n d e r the
supervision of J . W. Kuzmeski, Official Chemist in charge.

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