Evaluation of nutrient composition, functional and sensory attributes of sorghum, pigeonpea and soybean flour blends as complementary food in Nigeria

Abstract

Child malnutrition, due to poor quality of complementary foods, is a major cause of mortality among children in many sub-Saharan Africa, Nigeria inclusive. The study aimed to develop a nutritious complementary food from Nigeria’s staple foods. Complementary food was developed from flour blends of sorghum, pigeonpea and soybean with the help of D-optimal mixture design, using Design Expert 9.0. The proximate and antinutrient composition, functional and sensory properties of the blends were determined. One-way analysis of variance was employed to analyse the data, and Duncan’s multiple range test used to separate the means at p < 0.05. The moisture (8.60 - 9.71%), crude protein (21.84 – 22.63 %), crude fat (2.57 – 2.94 %), crude fibre (5.15 – 5.94 %), ash (3.71 – 4.12 %) and carbohydrate (56.06 – 57.44 %) contents of the blends varied significantly (p < 0.05) among the flour blends. The proteincontent of the blends increased as legumes increased in the formulation. There were significant (p < 0.05) differences in the antinutrient composition and pasting properties of the flour blends. Significant (p < 0.05) differences occurred in the functional properties of the blends except water absorption capacity. All the complementary foods were acceptable but the one obtained from flour blend of 71.4 % sorghum, 14.4 % pigeonpea and 14.3 % soybean had the highestoverall acceptability score. Hence, a nutritious and acceptable complementary food could be produced from flour blends of sorghum, pigeonpea and soybean.

Key words : Sorghum, pigeonpea, soybean, complementary food, antinutrient