Assessment of the nutritional, physical, sensory and commercial potential of three underutilized paddy land races of North East India for ready to rehydrate food industry

Abstract

Ready to rehydrate food products are consumers’ choice in global market. More than 9500 rice cultivars (Oryza sativa L.) were reported from North East India. Three underutilized paddy land races of NE India viz., Chakhao poireiton, Joha and Chokuwa were assessed and compared for their commercial potential to develop ready to rehydrate rice (RTRr) for the first time. RTRr were prepared by processing paddy via soaking, sand frying, sun drying and milling following conventional method of soft rice processing using metric scale and were assessed for nutritional (AOAC methods), energy (Atwater factors), moisture content (Moisture analyzer), water activity (Water activity meter), rehydration time and sensory analysis (9-point hedonic scale) by 25 untrained panelists. All the experiments were performed in triplicates. PCA and AHC were done by XLSTAT and ANOVA at p<0.05 were conducted using Sigmaplot. RTRr exhibited quickest rehydration time 40.00 ± 4.08 min in Chakhao poireiton, highest yield (63.20±1.03%) in Joha, carbohydrate (87.48±0.01%) in Joha, protein (10.06±0.32%) in Chakhao poireiton, fat (9.25±0.5%) in Chokuwa, ash (3.23±0.46%) in Chakhao poireiton, dietary fiber (12.13±0.4%) in Chokuwa, energy (437 kcal) in Joha, color difference (ΔEab) value 9.65±0.02 in Chakhao poireiton RTRr powder, overall acceptability of 7.08±0.098 in Chokuwa, product characterization and panelists’ evaluation by PCA 84.27% and 56.70% between the components in preferring Chokuwa. These paddy cultivars exhibited commercial potential to develop RTRr. RTRr developed from Chakhao poireiton exhibited higher protein, ash and low moisture contents, RTRr developed from Joha showed high carbohydrate and energy content and low water activity and RTRr developed from Chokuwa was rated highest in sensory analysis by the panelists.