STANDARDS IN POLISHING OF SELECTED MINOR MILLETS FOR BETTER OUTPUT AND OPTIMIZED NUTRITIONAL BENEFITS

Polishing is done in the selected minor millets of browntop millet and little millet in Satake polisher. The standard operating conditions of machine, viz. speed, time and degree of polishing and crop parameter of mc(%wb) of the crop, were optimized for the minimum wastage of carbohydrate, protein, fat, dietary fibre, ash and minerals such as calcium, iron and zinc estimated using standard procedure. Minor millets have the potential to grow with the minimum resources under abiotic stress and it fulfills every criterion be considered as a potential alternative for combating malnutrition and ensure food security. The degree of polishing is very important in making value added products using browntop and little millet since it determines the premium quality of polished grains with higher whiteness index in the hunter colorimeter. The bran layer being brown in color brings down the commercial value of the crop. Polishing inactivates the enzyme lipase that is very important in preventing rancidity of the value added product. The bran being a byproduct of milling is used in oil extraction using Soxhlet apparatus. The selected machine parameters of polishing and the crop includes moisture content,% of 8,12& 16% mc (wb), polishing speed of 800,1600 & 2400rpm and polishing time of 0.5,2,3.50min for little millet and polishing time of 2,5&8min for browntop millet. Using design expert software 12.0 version using Box Bekhnen design, the optimized trials were selected for the two millets. The moisture content of the selected 2 millets were found out using water sprinkling method and the standard formula for water addition. The polished outturn of head rice yield of millets and brokens were weighed and tabulated. Among all the trials the optimized outturn for both crop and machine parameters were found out using the software. The optimized condition using design expert software version 12.0 in polishing parameters include moisture content of the grain, 10%, speed of rollers in polisher, 1300rpm, polishing time, 8.00min, degree of polishing, 3.5%, head yield, 84.02% and brokens, 10.03%. The optimized little millet polishing parameters include moisture content of the grain, 10%, speed of roller in polisher, 1500rpm, polishing time, 2.00 min, degree of polishing, 3.80, head yield,, 94.36 % and brokens, 5.80%. All readings were mean of 3 observations. The statistical significance was significant at 5% level of significance.