Development of weaning food formulations based on malting and roller drying of sorghum and cowpea

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Summary: Sorghum and cowpea were steeped in water for 16 h, allowed to germinate for 72 and 24 h respectively, then dried to about 14% moisture. Roots and shoots of sorghum sprouts were cleaned off and the devegetated malt was kilned at 70°C, moistened with 3% added water, heaped for about 10 min, milled and sieved to obtain debranned malt flour. Cowpea sprouts were split, dehusked, kilned at 85°C and milled. Malted sorghum and malted cowpea flours were blended in the proportion of 70:30 to prepare the malted weaning food (MWF). A precooked weaning food (RDF) was prepared by roller drying a cold water slurry consisting of 70% pearled sorghum flour and 30% toasted cowpea flour. The cooked paste viscosity of MWF was considerably lower than that of RDF and the blend of raw sorghum (70%) and cowpea (30%), at all comparable slurry concentrations. The protein content of MWF was 13.4% and that of RDF was 13.0%, but the available lysine content of MWF protein was 3.85% and that of RDF protein was 2.95%. The protein efficiency ratio for MWF (2.26) was significantly higher than that for RDF (1.87).