5^th Global Food Security Food Safety and Sustainability

Biography

Biography: Kulwa Furahisha Miraji

Abstract

Pepeta, a flaked rice-based ethnic food traditionally processed using immature rice grains as sole ingredients. Pepeta processing involves roasting of fresh harvested immature rice grains, pounding of roasted grains in a mortar to obtain flattened rice grains, and cleaning by winnowing to remove the husks ready for consumption. Two different rice cultivars, Oryza sativa L.  (TXD306 and LAWAMA) at two maturity stages (15^th  and  24^th days after 50% heading, DAH) were processed into pepeta. The effect of processing method on nutrition and functional properties (surface lipid, total lipid, ash, thiamine, niacin, iron, zinc, dietary fibre and starch digestibility in-vitro) on pepeta product were evaluated. A significant effect on surface lipid, total lipid, ash, thiamine, niacin, iron, zinc, and total dietary fibre (TDF) contents were observed (p < 0.05). Pepeta showed higher values than corresponding milled rice grains in both cultivars. It was found that pepeta product is rich source of soluble dietary fibre (SDF), with higher SDF to TDF ratio ranging from 21 – 45% over 18 – 32% corresponding rice grains in milled form. Digestibility of pepeta starch to various starch hydrolysing enzymes in-vitro was slightly lower compared to cooked rice grains. This suggest that pepeta processing conditions (initial moisture content of rice grains, and roasting temperature and time) can be modulated to produce healthy and nutritious rice-based food products with low glycaemic index.