Vol. 11, Issue 2 (2022)

Author(s):
Mahendra Kumar, Alpana Singh, Ankit Bharti and Anubha Upadhyay

Abstract:
Pseudo-cereals have considerable scope to be utilized as health food, because it has better nutritional quality as compared to some other cereals in many respects and studies on this line are progressing. However, quinoa is underutilized because of lack of suitable processing technology. The processed quinoa obtained as outcome of the present study will be useful in developing low cost health foods by certain processing techniques such as parching can be easily adopted at cottage and even at household level. Objective of the study was assessment of effects of parching on nutritional and physical characteristics of quinoa. The results showed that acceptable processed products could be produced from quinoa by optimization of parching method. Parched quinoa improved nutrition in terms of proteins, carbohydrates, In-vitro protein digestibility, In-vitro starch digestibility and good sensory acceptability. Based on the optimization of processing method, parched quinoa which was parched at 160°C for 30 sec were found to be most acceptable product. All the processed products showed improvement in water absorption capacity, expansion volume and bulk density which was useful for further formulation and product development. Thus, in the light of the scientific data it may be concluded that nutritional bioavailability and digestibility of quinoa could be improved by reducing its bitter content and in this regards the processing method contribute to enhancing utilization of quinoa based products.