Yusufu Mohammed Ikagu^1,, Alexander Destiny Ponnan²

Masa is one of Nigerian indigenous food product that is produced from cereal crops such as rice, maize, guinea corn and millet. It is mostly consumed by all age groups in Nigeria in various forms. As a cereal based food product, it is lacking in protein, hence the objective of this study was to evaluate the selected physico-chemical, antioxidant and sensory properties of masa produced from inexpensive broken rice enriched with African yam bean an underutilized leguminous crop. In this study broken rice kernel and African yam bean were separately processed into flour and blended into 9 different ratios from which a preliminary sensory evaluation was carried out to determine 7 suitable blend formulations for the study, samples were labelled sample A (100% rice), sample B (95:5 rice and African yam bean blend), sample C (90:10 rice and African yam bean blend), sample D (85:15 rice and African yam bean blend), sample E (80:20 rice and African yam bean blend), sample F (75:25 rice and African yam bean blend) and sample G (70:30 rice and African yam bean blend). Functional, pasting, antioxidant and sensory properties were evaluated according to standard procedures and compared with the control, sample prepared from rice alone. Results for functional properties showed that bulk density and oil absorption capacity decreased with increasing substitution of African yam bean from 2.016 to 0.953g/cm³ and 0.9800 to 0.7833g/g respectively while that of water absorption, emulsion capacity and gelation concentration increased ranging from 1.780 to 2.093g/g, 22.763 to 27.806ml/g and 6.000 to 16.000 % respectively. Pasting properties showed increase in peak viscosity (168.55 to 181.85 RVU), pasting temperature (54.16 to 70.16°C) and trough viscosity (151.63 to 170.23 RVU) with increasing substitution of African yam bean while those of final viscosity, setback viscosity, breakdown viscosity and pasting time showed decrease ranging from 240.58 to 230.39 RVU, 88.96 to 60.17 RVU, 16.92 to 11.62 RVU and 9.86 to 6.00 min. respectively. Antioxidant activities for ferrous reducing antioxidant properties, hydroxyl radical, DPPH radical scavenging ability and ferrous chelating ability ranged from 0.120 to 0.320mmol/100g, 45.713 to 65.716%, 34.946 to 45.800% and 36.250 to 46.250% respectively. The sensory evaluation showed that African yam bean enriched samples were generally accepted with scores ranging from 6.040 to 8.120 for aroma, 6.423 to 8.600 for appearance, 6.560 to 8.600 for taste, 6.680 to 8.440 for texture, and 6.760 to 8.720 for overall acceptability. The study indicates that protein enriched and acceptable masa could be produced from blends of broken rice and African yam bean, and masa produced with up to 5 % level of African yam bean compare favorably with the control sample in all the sensory attributes.

Masa, broken rice, African yam bean, physico-chemical, Anti-oxidants and sensory properties