Nutritional and Sensorial Quality of Smoked Oldeania alpine and Vigna radiata Composite Flour in Uganda

Different locally available crops are blended to form safe, nutritious, culturally acceptable, and affordable composite flours as one of the common practices aimed at ensuring food and nutrition security. This study aimed at developing a nutritious sensorially acceptable powdered product for use as sauce, from smoked bamboo shoots and mung bean. Smoked bamboo shoots locally sourced from the slopes of Mount Elgon were soaked in clean portable water, washed, cut, dried and then milled into flour while mung bean was sorted, washed, roasted and milled. Flour formulations with ratios of 10:90 (F313); 20:80 (F248); 40:60 (F118); 50:50 (F292), 0:100 (F514), and 100:0 (F412) bamboo shoots flour : mung bean flour respectively were prepared and evaluated for antinutritional quality (alkaloids content, trypsin inhibitor activity, phytates and oxalates content); proximate composition and sensorial quality. Results revealed that formulations F118 (40:60) and F292 (50:50) were the most, and equally sensorially liked formulations. The formulations had respective values of: 19.94 and 21.54mg/100g phytates; 11.19 and 10.2mg/g trypsin inhibitor activity; 41.13 and 41.65mg/100g oxalates; 6.26 and 6.69mg/100g alkaloids; 4.32 and 4.99g/100g crude fat; 27.88 and 26.11g/100g crude protein; 47.9 and 48.99g/100g total carbohydrates; and 20.25 and 19.81% dietary fibre. Based on the results, it can be concluded that addition of 40 to 50% bamboo shoot powder to mung bean flour greatly improves the sensorial acceptability and nutritional quality of mung bean flour with the antinutrients remaining within the acceptable range for human consumption.