Comparative Study of Functional Properties of Amaranth and Buckwheat Flour

Now a days there is trends for formulation of high quality, healthy products for the healthy life style and appropriate nutrition using available food crops. The pseudo-cereals amaranth and buckwheat have attracted much interest in recent years. In addition to being one of the important energy sources due to their starch content, these pseudo-cereals provide good quality protein, dietary fibre and lipids rich in unsaturated fats. This study examined the functional properties of flour of these pseudo-cereals to improve technological quality of end-use food products. Amaranth exhibited 159.1% water absorption capacity, 16.66% gelation capacity, 0.03 g/g emulsification capacity, 43.6% flour solubility and 8.30 g/g swelling power. On the other hand, buckwheat showed 135.2% water absorption capacity, 30.66% gelation capacity, 0.56 g/g emulsification capacity, 22.4% flour solubility and 7.63 g/g swelling power. The results depicted that gelation capacity, emulsification capacity of buckwheat flour was higher than amaranth flour whereas, water absorption capacity, flour solubility and swelling power of amaranth flour was higher than buckwheat flour.