Adlay (Coix lacryma-jobi), a potential source alternative to wheat flour: A financial feasibility analysis for small scale production

Abstract

The consumption of wheat flour-based products such as noodles, biscuits, and cookies in Indonesia increases annually during the rising of costumer need for instant and ready to eat food products. On the other hand, the dependence on wheat import in Indonesia makes the searching of potential source alternative to wheat flour is important. Adlay (Coix lacryma-jobi), known as Hanjeli (in Sundanese), is underutilized cereal plant which easily found in Indonesia and has highly nutritional contents. This study was then conducted to evaluate financial feasibility of adlay flour production. From product analysis, several trials were carried out to produce adlay flour with nutritional compositions including moisture, ash, fat protein, and carbohydrates were 13.61, 0.87, 1.41, 12.56, and 71.54 %, respectively. In financial feasibility analysis, the establishment of mini plant to produce adlay flour was feasible indicated by some feasibility criteria such as net present value (NPV), benefit-cost ratio (B/C), internal rate of return (IRR), and pay-back period (PBP) were 92.065 million IDR, 1.14, 48.89 %, and 24 months, respectively.