Development of Fruit and Vegetable Based Millet Pasta

Incorporation of nutricereals, fruits and vegetables into daily dietaries is a food design strategy that can add several health benefits. Pasta, a well-known food product, is obtained from extrusion process by mixing wheat semolina and water. Replacing wheat with millets and water with fruit/vegetable pulp in the development of pasta may enhance its nutritional quality and lowers its carbohydrate levels, which will benefit for diabetic and cancer patients. The aim of the current study is to formulate the millet-based pasta with locally available fruit/vegetables. In this study, different proportion of diverse ingredients such as barnyard millet semolina, papaya, gogu and tapioca were used. Pasta was developed in five different formulations with barnyard millet, papaya and gogu incorporation; gogu and papaya were added up to 15 and 30 %, respectively. Among five proportions, combination of papaya (20 %) and gogu (5 %) addition to barnyard millet-based pasta has the highest organoleptic score. Addition of fruit/vegetable has improved dietary fiber and total mineral content by 89.30 and 12.61 %, respectively.