Palm wines are produced following several traditional processes, very consumed and appreciated in West Africa. In South-West of Burkina Faso, Borassus akeassii palm wine, plays a nutritional and socio-economic role and replaces Sorghum beer. Because of reported health issues due to the bad practices of palm wine tappers, we performed survey aimed to assess the impact of technological diagrams on the quality of this wine in order to improve its quality. In South-West of Burkina Faso, survey was undertaken among tappers, vendors and consumers of palm wine, followed by microbiological and biochemical analysis. Questioning of 88 tappers, 80 vendors and 155 consumers by using cards of survey, revealed that 3 critical points were very important for improvement of wine quality. It is washing of flask used for collection with, filtration without dilution of palm wine and washing of conditioning containers. According their practices, tappers were divided into two sub-groups: Sub-groups 1 and 2.
Biochemical analysis of palm wines revealed differences between the two sub-groups’ processes for acidity 0.64±0.08 versus 0.82±0.29% (m/v), pH 4.90±0.10 versus 4.05±0.61 and alcohol content 5.80 ± 2.13 versus 4.7±1.47% (v/v) for sub-groups1 and 2 respectively. Microbiological investigations show that total and thermotolerant coliforms and Staphylococcus aureus were also detected in wine of sub-group 2 and were 5.46±1.34, 3.15±1.90 and 6.40±1.23 log cfu ml respectively but not detected in sub-group 1 wine. Our study shows that wine quality could be significantly improved by using undiluted sap and controlling the three critical points of main diagram.

Borassus akeassii, palm wine, survey, technological diagrams