Development of weaning food formulations based on malting and roller drying of sorghum and cowpea

Summary Sorghum and cowpea were steeped in water for 16 h, allowed to germinate for 72 and 24 h respectively, then dried to about 14% moisture. Roots and shoots of sorghum sprouts were cleaned off and the devegetated malt was kilned at 70°C, moistened with 3% added water, heaped for about 10 min, milled and sieved to obtain debranned malt flour. Cowpea sprouts were split, dehusked, kilned at 85°C and milled. Malted sorghum and malted cowpea flours were blended in the proportion of 70:30 to prepare the malted weaning food (MWF). A precooked weaning food (RDF) was prepared by roller drying a cold water slurry consisting of 70% pearled sorghum flour and 30% toasted cowpea flour. The cooked paste viscosity of MWF was considerably lower than that of RDF and the blend of raw sorghum (70%) and cowpea (30%), at all comparable slurry concentrations. The protein content of MWF was 13.4% and that of RDF was 13.0%, but the available lysine content of MWF protein was 3.85% and that of RDF protein was 2.95%. The protein efficiency ratio for MWF (2.26) was significantly higher than that for RDF (1.87).