Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd) is a pseudo-cereal of the Chenopodiaceae family native to Latin America and was first cultivated 5000-7000 years ago. Now, it is mainly cultivated in South America
Asian countries, despite being the largest producers and yielding a significant proportion of the world’s rice, have poor disposal facilities for the harvested rice straw (stubble). Due to higher costs in their handling relative to their value, local farmers prefer the burning of stubble fields, thus creating environmental problems. Even though the government has taken initiatives, no effective solution has been discovered to handle this large agro-waste problem efficiently. In this regard, the utilization of rice straw to develop nanocellulose (NC) products is of interest. Renewability and biodegradability, along with suitable mechanical and thermal properties required for the packaging functions, are key advantages of NC. The bio-nanocomposites prepared using NC and other bio-based polymers are also being widely considered for sustainable food packaging applications due to the reinforcement provided by NC and alternative petroleum-based packaging materials. This review provides an overview of process utilization for preparing NC products using rice straw, pulping methods, and isolation to produce bio-nanocomposites for sustainable food packaging applications. The challenges and future aspects covering the utilization of rice straw for producing NC and eventually producing active packaging materials are also discussed.
Background: Gulab jamun is a delicious dairy food items popular not only the Indian subcontinent but also in all over the world. Now a days, people are health conscious towards the healthy diet having low in fat content. However, Vacuum frying (VF) is one of the best technologies which produce high quality food items having low fat content and better appearance with respect to atmospheric frying (AF).
Methods: For the preparation of gulab jamun, the dough balls were fried under the VF (oil temperature: 125, 135, 145°C, vacuum pressure: 15, 20, 25 cm Hg and time: 8, 10, 12 min) and AF (temperature: 160°C, time: 4 min) conditions. The prepared gulab jamun was compared with different parameters such as moisture content, oil content, color, volume expansion, texture and structure.
Result: The optimized gulab jamun was obtained using response surface methodology at temperature 137.82°C, pressure 25 cm Hg and time 9.38 min. The product had less in oil content, intense in color, smooth and soft texture (texture analyzer) and porous in structure (X-ray micro-CT scan) as compared to atmospheric fried gulab jamun.
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