Evaluation of Physical, Anti-nutritional and Optimisation of Milling Characteristics of Quinoa Grains for Sustainable Food Security

Quinoa is a popular pseudo-cereal belonging from Andean region of South America. Post-harvest processing of quinoa plays important role in product development, further processing storage and shelf life extension of grains. The aim of present study was evaluation of physical properties, anti-nutritional factors of quinoa and quinoa grain were milled in order to investigate milling yield, milling loss, broken quinoa and head quinoa as the effect of milling in pearling. Post-harvest processing of quinoa was done in the form of pearling after dehulling process and obtained intermediate products. Pearling process of quinoa was done for a constant period of 5 minutes and different milling proportions were evaluated under different runs of the machine. In this study, thousand seed weight of quinoa grain observed about 2.50 to 2.58g in different runs. True density of quinoa ranged between 990 kg/cm3 (Max.) to 983 kg/cm3 (Min.) whereas bulk density of quinoa was stated between 680 to 691 Kg/cm3. Porosity of quinoa showed between 0.302 to 0.308. Saponin content in quinoa samples varied between 3.02 and 3.05% whereas phytin was found about 0.81 to 0.93%. Obtained results also showed L and b value increased after processing while a value decreased. Results obtained from processing showed that husk percentage found maximum as 19.01% whereas highest broken quinoa proportion was 23.63%. It was also observed that highest milling yield or recovery percentage was 63.58% while maximum milling loss recorded as 40.63%. Furthermore, the influence of pearling on the milling characteristics of quinoa were investigated. The milling fractions can be used to obtain new bread products with improved nutritional profiles.