Abstract: Cashew nut (Annarcardium occidentale L.) Is an evergreen perennial crop highly cultivated at tropical regions across the world. In Asian and African countries cashew was introduced near about sixteenth century. Globally, cashew nut production is riched to 3.30 million tons in 2015. Increasing demand of cashew products make suitable this crop to become highly economic and put forward the countries towards developed status. In the current investigation, proximate attributes and mineral concentrations were studied by standard available analytical methods. From the study it was observed that Cashew nut is riched in crude fat (47.9%), crude protein (33.9%) and also contains moisture (7.1%), ash (2.9%), crude fibre (2.7%) and shown less carbohydrate (1.1%). Mineral composition was measured in mg/100 gm and potassium concentration potent to be highest (26.66±0.6) plays an important role in nerve functioning and muscle contractions. Potassium followed by calcium (21.23 ±0.30), magnesium (18.9±0.15), phosphorus (13.63±0.6) and sodium (7.9± 0.1) acts as important mineral for metabolic growth and development. Iron (0.53±0.06) and zinc (0.73±0.05) concentration were considerably negligible in cashew sample. Physico-chemical properties were determined from cashew nut oil in terms of mg/gm and observed that cashew sample has specific gravity (0.912), refractive index (1.398), acid value (9.5 mg KOH/g), saponification number (133 mg KOH/g) that shown the inability to form soap and also iodine value (39.1 mg iodine/100 gm) and free fatty acid (4.8 mg KOH/g) efficiently make this crop highly edible. The current study may help to make pathway to explore more medicinal and antioxidant properties to become highly challenged cash crop in recent decades.

Keywords- Perennial, proximate attributes, Iodine, saponification number, antioxidants

| DOI: 10.17148/IARJSET.2022.9535