Consumer Preference and Storage Stability Assessment of Drum Dried-Maltodextrin Added Kunun-gyada Powder

Kunun gyada is cereal-based Nigerian porridge produce from cereal flour in combination with groundnut milk. There is the growing popularity of local beverage drinks such as the kunun-gyada, kunun-Zaki, kunun-tsamiya in Nigeria, and thus, this posses great research challenges that require processing improvement from the traditional method of preparation, value addition, and extension of storage life of the products. Research has shown that the product can easily go bad when stored unrefrigerated and even when refrigerated, the product can only be kept for a maximum of four days (Gaffa et al., 2002). Sensory evaluation indicated that the kunun gyada powder was slightly oily to touch. The product was rated low for overall acceptability base on sensory evaluation by consumers under a 5-point hedonic scale. The powder was observed to be oily which might have hurt the panelist overall assessment of the product. Due to this, the kunun gyada powder was modified to contain 5 % maltodextrin and was investigated for consumer acceptability and storage stability. The product was stable during storage, the colour of the maltodextrin-added product was significantly lighter (L* was 76.31%). The viscosity of the product also increased from 15.75 to 17.12 mPa.s. The addition of maltodextrin improved the product's overall acceptability significantly from 2.72 to 3.89 based on a five-point Hedonic scale.