NUTRITIONAL COMPOSITION OF SPIRULINA PLATENSIS POWDER AND ITS ACCEPTABILITY IN FOOD PRODUCTS.

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the physico-chemical properties of Spirulina platensis powder and its incorporation in wheat flour for development of value added products and their consumer acceptability. Spirulina was found to be very rich source of protein i.e 71.90% with high in vitro digestibility (92.59%) and containing all essential amino acids specially total lysine (5.72 g/16gN) as this amino acid is lacking in wheat flour. It also contained good amount of crude fibre (9.70%), ash (3.50%) and total dietary fibre (14.98%), whereas, carbohydrate (13.63%) and fat (1.27%) were found to be in very low amount which contributed low energy (353.55 Kcal/100g) content. With regard to total minerals such as calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, iron and zinc were 620.80, 790.42, 285.90, 49.50 and 3.95 mg/100g, respectively were reported in Spirulina platensis powder. α-linolenic and γ-linolenic acid which accounted for 14.80 and 30.00% of total fatty acids, respectively were reported in Spirulina powder. Hence, keeping in view its excellent nutritional profile, Spirulina powder was incorporated at different levels i.e 2, 4, 6 and 8% in wheat flour for development of biscuits, buns, noodles and macroni and evaluated for their consumer acceptability. It was observed that all the products up to 6% level of incorporation were found acceptable by majority of respondents. Copy Right, IJAR, 2017,. All rights reserved.