Effect of extrusion conditions on the physicochemical and phytochemical properties of red rice and passion fruit powder based extrudates.

The passion fruit powder blended rice flour based extrudate was developed and investigated in terms of physicochemical and phytochemical properties. The extrusion process was performed using a twin screw extruder and optimized using rotatable central composite design followed by response surface methodology. The effect of process parameters such as temperature (80-150 °C), screw speed (200-400 rpm), moisture content (20-30%) and passion fruit powder (0-15%) on product quality was investigated. The optimum extrusion conditions of temperature, screw speed, feed moisture content, and passion fruit powder were 97.50 °C, 250 rpm, 25.20% and 11.25%, respectively. At optimum condition, the predicted values of responses were expansion ratio 8.05, water absorption index 2.77, total phenolic content 129.492 mg GAE/100 g and DPPH scavenging activity 65.79%. A comparison between optimized and control extrudates revealed that thermal, crystallinity and morphological properties of extrudates differed significantly. The comparison was also conducted in terms of FT-IR, SEM-EDS and HPLC analysis. The phytochemical properties showed that β-carotene, cyanidin-3-glucoside, peonidin-3-D-glucoside chloride were higher in control whereas the optimized sample evinced more (±)-α-tocopherol and D-α-tocopherol.