Estimation of field residue of cabbage and development of fortified foods

Abstract

Cabbage represents an important group of plants which produce significantly large amount of biomass consisting of leaves. Cabbage outer leaves were reported to contain high amount of fibre and bioactive compounds with high antioxidant activity. So a study was conducted to estimate cabbage field residue and development of fortified foods. The results showed that total crop residue was 15.08 tonnes/ha (27.89%) and leaves were the major residue (13.13 tonnes/ha). After harvesting, the residual leaves were collected and divided into two lots; one was subjected for blanching to inactivate the native enzymes and another was unblanched, the leaves were dried at 60 ºC and powdered. Common bakery food products such as bread, biscuits and rusk were prepared by fortifying the raw material with blanched and unblanched residual cabbage leaves (RCL) powder at 5, 7 and 10% levels. The nutrient compositions such as protein, carbohydrates, fat, crude fibre, total carotenoids, vitamin C and total antioxidant acitivity were estimated for unblanched and blanched RCL, their powder and fortified products and found significant differences among the treatments. The data indicated that, with increase in RCL powder there was an increase in all the nutrient components except fat and carbohydrates. The fortified products were evaluated for sensory qualities which exhibited no significant differences among the treatments but 10% fortification was less preferred because of cabbage flavour and slight bitterness. Besides these products, encapsulation was also done with blanched RCL powder and powdered aonla pomace with twelve different combinations and their nutrient composition were also determined