Textural characterization of foxtail millet gels: effect of cations and hydrocolloids

Abstract

Foxtail millet (Setaria italica) is traditionally cultivated in mainly dry land areas and has nutritional importance. The textural characteristics of gels, formed with foxtail millet flour at different concentrations (9-13 %, dry solid basis) along with selected cations and hydrocolloids, were determined. Different concentrations of monovalent (NaCl) and divalent (CaCl 2 and FeSO 4 ) cations, and hydrocolloids such as gelatin, gellan, starch, xanthan and agar were incorporated in gels. The gel forming ability markedly improved with an increase in the concentrations of CaCl 2 and FeSO 4 , while NaCl had a marginal effect. Gels prepared with 11 % of foxtail millet alone were found to sensorially acceptable while addition of 0.5 % CaCl 2 or 0.2 % FeSO 4 respective with 10 % foxtail millet also resulted in acceptable gels. Among the hydrocolloids, starch and gellan had marked effects on gel formation, and textural and sensory attributes. The principal component analysis (PCA) plot showed that concentration of foxtail millet formed a cluster with sensory hardness, springiness, cohesiveness, and instrumental peak stress, fracture strain and compression energy indicating that these attributes were interrelated to each other. Stickiness and gelling time formed a cluster on the other side of the axis indicating inversely related. Foxtail millet has a good potential for development of new ranges of gelled health benefiting convenience products with nutraceutical property, and the addition of cations helps to achieve acceptable structural integrity.

Healthy and Resilient Cereals and Pseudo-Cereals for Marginal Agriculture: Molecular Advances for Improving Nutrient Bioavailability

“…Genotypic differences exist for antioxidant activities and some specific varieties such as SiA-2593 were identified as therapeutic and functional foods (Shejawale et al, 2016). Foxtail millet starch is of great interest among entrepreneurs owing to its flexibility to make gels using foxtail millet flour and divalent cations such as CaCl 2 and FeSO 4 (Nagaprabha and Bhattacharya, 2016). S. italica is considered one of the best minor millet crops for anemic and diabetic people, thus reinforcing nutrition security besides food security (Bandyopadhyay et al, 2017).…”

Nutritional exploration of foxtail millet (Setaria italica) in addressing food security and its utilization trends in food system

“…Therefore, keeping in mind all the constraints, the value addition of foxtail millet must be encouraged to formulate highly nutritious food products. Nagaprabha and Bhattacharya (2015)…”

Multi-omics intervention in Setaria to dissect climate-resilient traits: Progress and prospects

“…Characteristics of various elements, GABA and polyphenols, β-glucan ( Sharma et al, 2018b , c ), and the effect of storage conditions on germination ( Sharma et al, 2018a ) were analyzed in S. italica . Gel forming ability of foxtail millet was increased significantly with the addition of CaCl 2 and FeSO 4 , adding to its nutraceutical property ( Nagaprabha and Bhattacharya, 2016 ). Further, physiochemical characterization of starch gel from green gram and foxtail millet was also performed by Nagaprabha et al (2018) .…”