Enzymatic Treatment of Enhanced Musa Peel Flour as Potential Low Digestible Starch

Enhanced musa peel flour has a great potential as a low digestible starch that is beneficial for diabetic patients. Low digestible starch prevents the rapid increase of blood-glucose level which is crucial to protect from internal organ from damage. However, the black colour of the flour which is due to the phenolic compound oxidation in the cell wall has affected the sensory evaluation of consumers. In this work, instead of using conventional chemical treatment, enzymatic treatment is utilized to reduce the dark colour of the flour. Cell wall disruption by degradation of hemicellulose component by xylanase was hypothesized to accelerate the removal of the dark pigment. Colour reduction was optimized by varying xylanase concentration and incubation duration. Next, starch digestibility analysis was conducted using amylase enzyme to determine the starch digestibility fractions in the treated flour. As a result, instead of obtaining significant colour reduction of the flour, it is observed that there is a significant increment of resistant starch content (14%) in the treated enhanced musa peel flour. Meanwhile, reduction of 86.44% of rapidly digested starch content in the treated flour was also obtained. As a conclusion, the disruption of the cell wall by xylanase lead to the increase of the resistant starch content in the enhanced musa peel flour.