RESPONSE SURFACE METHODOLOGY FOR OPTIMIZATION OF FLAKING PROCESS FROM PROCESSING OF SELECTED PADDY HYBRID

Abstract

The flaked rice popularly called as poha is famous in cottage level for its nutritional value as well as snack food. Snack foods plays a major role in children’s growth of vital parts and size and hence this snack food industry especially flaked rice has become common in day today life. The paddy hybrids of low cost if converted into snack food fetches a huge market value both in inland and in export and the selected variables for this processing of flaked rice includes, soaking time, roasting temperature, roasting time,drying temperature and flaking time. The hybrids selected are of different characteristics and the conditions of processing for making of flaked rice differs from each other. Hence the process is optimized for each and every variety separately. The optimized product is of good characteristics in appearance and taste is also tested for the commercialisation of the optimized process. The three different levels selected were in soaking time, 24 h, 36 h and 48 h, roasting temperature, 170 °C, 180 °C and 190 °C, roasting time, 2, 4 and 6 min, gap between rollers, 2, 3 and 4 mm and flaking time, 60, 90 and 120 sec. The optimizations of all these 5 parameters were made for a maximised yield of flaked rice and the hyrbids performing on par with IR-64, the ruling check variety is found out and has to be commercialized so that the cost involved in the check variety, IR-64 can be ruled out and hybrid can be replaced. The optimum conditions of PA-6444 for maximised yield of 0.42 g/kg of paddy hybrid were, 48.0h of soaking time, 190 °C of roasting temperature, 2.0min of roasting time, 2 mm of gap between rollers and 120sec of flaking time. The central composite design was performed with 27 runs in RSM in Minitab 17.0 sofware. The analysis of variance showed that, soaking time and gap between rollers had significant change in the output yield of flaked rice. Mean yield of PA-6444 is 380.75±9.68, minimum of yield is 305.00±9.68, maximum of yield is 447.00±9.68, cv is 13.21. Mean yield of IR-64, check variety is 309.48±1.11, minimum of yield is 301.00±1.11, maximum of yield is 317.67±1.11, cv is 1.86. The correlation coefficient between predicted and actual yield for the selected PA6444 hybrid is 0.96 and that of the check variety, IR-64 is 0.94 in flaking of paddy hybrids.