Fortification of Wheat Flour With Ragi Flour: Effect on Physical, Nutritional, Antioxidant and Sensory Profile of Noodles

The utilization of ragi flour for noodles preparation can be ideal due to its higher dietary fiber and essential minerals content. Therefore, the current work was focused to prepare high nutrients noodles by supplementing ragi flour in wheat flour at 10, 20, 30, and 40% levels. The fortified uncooked noodles showed an increase in steady diameter from 1.23 +/- 0.03 mm to 2.33 +/- 0.06 mm with a gradual decrease in lightness and whiteness index from 45.46 +/- 1.23 to 32.38 +/- 1.27 and 43.07 +/- 1.06% to 31.09 +/- 1.14%, with respective increase of ragi flour. The moisture content of uncooked noodles decreased steadily, while minor changes were observed in fat and ash content. Significant increase in protein (1.06 to 1.25 folds) and crude fiber content (1.64 to 3.62 folds) was noticed in ragi flour noodles in correlation to the control, respectively. The ragi flour fortified noodles not only had a prominent DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging activity but also increased phenolics content. The sensory studies depicted that a maximum of 20% ragi flour can be integrated in the noodles to attain desired overall acceptability and that was further verified by t-test at significance level p<0.05.