Starch and protein digestibility of newly released moth bean cultivars: Effect of soaking, dehulling, germination and pressure cooking.

Effect of soaking (12 h), soaking (12 h) dehulling, germination (60 h) and pressure cooking on starch and protein digestibility of four varieties of moth bean, one Local commonly used by the farmers of the area and three newly released high yielding varieties, Jwala, RMO 225 and RMO 257, was studied. The starch digestibility of raw unprocessed moth bean cultivars differed significantly (P < 0.05) from 25.4-28.2 mg maltose released/g flour being the highest and lowest in RMO 257 and RMO 225, respectively. The protein digestibility differed significantly from 70.3-74.6 per cent among all the unprocessed varieties of moth bean. All the processing treatments namely soaking, dehulling, germination and pressure cooking brought about appreciable enhancement in protein digestibility (1-19%) over the control and starch digestibility (19-115%) of all the four moth bean cultivars. However, out of all the processing treatments, germination (60 h) of soaked seeds (12 h) was the most effective in bringing about improvement in digestibility of starch and protein followed by dehulling and soaking (12 h).