Abstract

In recent years, research efforts in the developing countries have focused on the improvement of protein quality of food products due to mass malnutrition. Plantains are invaluable source of carbohydrate, comparable in nutritive value to yam or potato and are useful as a variant on the usual staple foods. It is consumed mainly in Nigeria as snacks and it is gradually finding applications in weaning food formulation and composite flour preparations. This study therefore aimed at evaluating the effect of soy flour fortification on chemical, physicochemical properties and consumer acceptability of plantain flour for probable industrial uses. The plantain- soy mixes were prepared from green matured plantain and defatted soybean. Substituted plantain flour with soy flour at varying proportions (100:0; 90:10; 80:20; 70:30; 60:40) was evaluated for proximate composition and physico-chemical properties. Reconstituted thick paste “amala” prepared from all the flour samples were evaluated for consumer acceptability. The proximate composition of the flour samples showed an increase of about 23 to 85 % in protein content, 148 to 840% in fat content, 3 to 7% in ash contents while the carbohydrate decreased from 3 to 12%  depending on the level of substitution. The bulk density (BD), swelling power (SP) and solubility (Sol) of the flour samples decreased while the water absorption capacity (WAC) increased on soy substitution. The pasting viscosity analysis showed that soy flour addition decreased the peak viscosity of the flour. The sensory evaluation of the reconstituted plantain thick paste indicated a sharp difference at 5% probability level in all quality attributes between 0- to 10% and 20 to 40% substitution, while that of 10% soy flour reconstituted thick paste “amala” was more preferred.

Key words: Plantain flour, soy flour, plantain-soy mixes, reconstituted thick paste, plantain.