Considerations for improvising fortified extruded rice products

Micronutrient fortification of rice by extrusion is an effective strategy to enhance micronutrient levels within rice-consuming individuals. The success of extrusion-based fortification is associated with micronutrient retention, enhanced bioavailability, low postprocessing losses, prolonged storage stability, and minimal sensory changes. The success of an optimally fortified product is primarily reliant upon the compositional considerations, but many attributes of extrudates can be indebted to the processing parameters too. Hence, an exhaustive investigation of this technology has been taken-up here, emphasizing on the compositional parameters in association with process parameters, which influence the final quality attributes like nutrient stability, bioavailability, and sensory properties. Based on these attributes of the end product, a collected data have been presented here to bring out the optimal compositional requirements. These together with cooking processes, extrusion process parameters, and storage conditions will enable formulate a product with enhanced sensory acceptance, better retention during cooking and storage, improved texture, and acceptable color. This review will thus help to optimize a need-based product, its quality, and enhance benefits of fortified extruded rice products.

Optimization of the preparation process of mung bean puffed infant rice cereal and evaluation of the structure and digestion characteristics of starch

The present study was carried out to produce a high quality puffed infant rice cereal from rice and mung bean through extrusion technology. Experiments were designed using 3 independent variables (i. e. 14–18% feed moisture, 400–550 r/min screw speed and 125–175 °C barrel temperature) and 3 response variables (i. e. bulk density, water solubility index and degree of gelatinisation) at five different levels of central composite rotatable design (CCRD). The results of optimization demonstrated that 14% feed moisture, 400 r/min screw speed and 175 °C barrel temperature could generate rice-mungbean extrudates with desirable functional properties. The selected extrudate samples were further examined using scanning electron microscope (SEM), rapid viscosity analyzer (RVA), Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, in vitro digestibility and fundamental nutrient analysis. Notably, the initial oval-shaped particle structure of starch in the raw materials disappeared, the surface debris and roughness increased, and the density decreased. The time required for the gelatinization of puffed infant rice cereal was the shortest, which was in agreement with the positioning of ready-to-eat weaning food for infants. Moreover, the puffed infant rice cereal displayed higher peak viscosity and breakdown value, smaller retrogradation value and greater top taste value compared to the commercial infant rice cereal. Besides maintaining the initial characteristic peak of starch, the puffed infant rice cereal demonstrated characteristic absorption peaks of COO- in the vicinity of 1546 cm−1 and 1437 cm−1, indicating the formation of carboxylate during extrusion. In addition, the puffed infant rice cereal exhibited firm diffraction peaks at the diffraction angles of 7.4°, 12.5° and 20.5°, indicating that a certain amount of starch changed from type A to type V. Furthermore, the digestive rate of puffed infant rice cereal was higher than that of commercial infant cereal (90.21 versus 86.96%, respectively; p < 0.05). Altogether, our findings reveal that the developed puffed infant rice cereal meets the standards set by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC; 74-1981).