Production And Determination Of Functional Properties Of Planatain Flour
Abstract
Production And Determination Of Functional Properties Of Planatain Flour Plantains (Musa epp) are important staple foods, which make substantial contribution of the nutrition and economy of millions of people through the developing world and are grown in 720 countries. The gross value of plantain production in sub-saharan Africa extent that of several other main food crops, such as maize, rice cassava and sweet potato. They are considered the fouth important global food commodity after rice, milk and wheat in terms of gross value of production and provide more than 25% of the carbohydrates for approximately 70 million people in sub-sharan Africa.
Plantain flour production involves procurement of matured plantain, feeling, chipping, drying, milling and packaging, plantain is an important source of carbohydrate, the starch fat and total sugars in plantain are adequate for the manufacture of plantain biscuit. Blanding considerably reduce the emulsion capacity and viscosity, while built density, water and oil absorption capacities were increased by blanding. Plantain could also be used as an emulsifier and thickner in food system. Plantain flour is a cheap source of iron, protein and vitamin A and the product can be marketed.
Conclusion
The blanching treatments had effect on the functional properties of the plantain flour samples. Flour from blanched plantain with peel (sample B) and flour from blanched plantain without peel (sample C) had the highest water absorption capacity and this gave it higher affinity to absorb water during production. The absorbent nature of the said flour has quantitative advantage and can be regarded as being economical. From the results obtained, it is quite evident that up to 20% substitution of wheat flour with plantain flour in bread production could be achieved. The result of sensory evaluation showed that sample C had the highest overall acceptability and could be compared with bread produced from 100% wheat flour.
