ABSTRACT

This study exploited cooking banana as a functional ingredient in high nutrient and acceptable biscuits. Cooking banana has been proving to be highly rich in many micronutrient and bio-active functional ingredients. Peeled cooking banana was processed into flour. The flour was blended with commercial bakery flour at 3, 6, 12, 18 and 24 to 3, 6 to produce five composite flour. The composite and wheat flour (MB1) were used to baked six biscuits samples (MB2, MB3, MB4, MB5 and MB6 respectively). Flours were analyzed for function al properties while biscuits samples were evaluated for physical appearance, composition, dietary fibre profile, antioxidant, physical and sensory properties. Addition of cooking banana flour proportionally increased many of yhe macro and micro nutrient, fibre profile, phytochemical contents and antioxidant properties. The ash, crude fibre, carbohydrate and energy value varied 1.77 – 1.97%, 1.62 – 1.66%, 64.36 – 67.59% and 418.70 – 425.69 Kcal, respectively. From the result of vitamin and phytochemical properties, it was observed that vitamin A, vitamin C, flavonoid and phytate of the different biscuits ranged between 0.19 and 0.25 µg/100g, 4.82 and 6.22 mg/100g, 0.66 and 0.74 mg/100g and 0.02 and 0.04 mg/100g, respectively. Biscuits supplemented with flours of cooking banana had higher contents of all these vitamins and phytochemical properties but vitamin C produced from wheat flour alone had the least value. Physical properties result, it was observed that spread ratio, spread factor and specific volume of the different biscuits ranged between 3.13-7.75%, 0.42–1.09% and 0.90–1.46% respectively. Biscuits supplemented with cooking banana flour had no significant difference (p>0.05) among the dietary fibre profile and antioxidant properties respectively. The sensory qualities of wheat biscuits fortified with cooking banana observed revealed that fortification of cooking banana flour with wheat flour could be used as a partial replacement for wheat flour at the levels of 3 to 10% in the production of biscuits. There were little or no traces and it is within the standard limit control of recommended daily allowance. It was concluded that the use of flours from cooking banana as composites of wheat had good potential for production of nutritionally superior biscuits compared to the use of wheat alone. This study may be an economically viable approach towards promoting utilization of indigenous crops or plant materials for production of value added products in developing countries such as Nigeria, where food security has been a major challenge.