In Ivory Coast, there are three different purple maize varieties whose culture is confined to Katiola (Central-North) area. These varieties locally called "Violet de Katiola" are the most widely grown and prized maize in this area because of its important socio-cultural character, its good organoleptic quality, its market value and its therapeutic virtues. The present paper aimed at evaluating physicochemical properties and fatty acid composition of these purple maize oilseeds in order to explore their nutritional and industrial potentialities. Physicochemical properties of the seed oils were: specific gravity, 0.90 to 0.91; refractive index (25 °C), 1.456 to 1.459; iodine value, 102.90 to 124.34 g I2 /100 g ; peroxide value, 4.23 to 4.99 meq.O2/kg ; free fatty acids, 0.74 to 0.86 %; acid value, 2.50 to 2.99 mg of KOH/g and; saponification value, 138.96 to 170.36 mg KOH/g. Results revealed that these oilseeds contained high amount of unsaturated fatty acids mainly consisting of linoleic (42.86 to 45.16 %) and oleic acids (33.27 to 34.98 %) which were desirable from the nutritional and health viewpoints. Palmitic acid was the major saturated fatty acid with contents ranged from 15.51 to 17.06 %. The oilseeds showed high PUFA/SFA ratios suggesting their ability to reduce cholesterol levels and coronary heart diseases in body. All these interesting characteristics confirm their usefulness for different nutritional and industrial applications.

Smoked fish is an important source of animal protein for Ivorian populations. However, the conditions for smoking and selling these smoked fish do not respect the rules of hygiene. To this end, a microbiological study of 60 samples of smoked fish and 15 fresh fish samples of bonito, a fish closely related to mackerel, taken from four markets in the city of Korhogo was carried out. The average total freshwater Mesophilic Flores of fresh fish was 1.29.10 9 UCF / g against 16.34.10 8 UCF / g for smoked fish. The average faecal coliforms (1.58.10 6 UCF / g) and fungal flora (2.36.10 4 UCF / g) of fresh fish are respectively higher than those obtained (3.34.10 4 UCF / g and 1.10 4 UCF / g) in smoked fish samples. The physico-chemical analyzes (pH and TE) of these samples revealed that the pH of the smoked fish is higher than the pH of the fresh fish while the water content of the fresh fish is higher than that of the smoked fish. These results suggest that efforts need to be made to improve the microbiological quality of smoked fish sold in the Korhogo markets as the smokers do not meet the standards.

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