High Popping Quality Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana) Genotypes

Abstract

Finger millet grains are rich in micronutrients, but their bioavailability to the human body is limited by its anti-nutritional factors. The popping of grain is one of the easy and economical household processing techniques that reduce the anti-nutritional factors. The popped grain can be used in the preparation of value-added products like weaning foods, noodles, and ready-to-eat products. In order to identify finger millet genotypes for high popping quality, grains of 85 genotypes were evaluated for popping quality using an iron frying pan by adjusting the grain moisture content to 19%. The popping ranged from 16.6% (Pichakaddi ragi) to 87.1% (Co-10) with a mean of 54.1%. Genotypes Co-10, Indaf-3 and Karikaddi ragi showed a high popping percentage (>80.0%). The brown-colored grain was better for popping (55.7%) than white grain (34.5%), and the freshly harvested grains were better than grain stored for three years