Consumer Acceptance of Lactic Acid Fermented Elephant Foot Yam Pickle

Rural people living in the geographically and socially isolated places of developing countries are often plagued by acute malnutrition. Fortifying the staple food with essential nutrients is an effective strategy to eradicate malnutrition through natural means. Elephant foot yam (Amorphophallus paeoniifolius Dennst-Nicolson) is cultivated extensively in rainfed and hilly tribal regions of India [1], where it‟s freely available. In rural areas it‟s used as primary major food for tribes during off-season [2]. Oxalates in tubers may either be a cause or a contributor as to the acridity, which causes irritation, and swelling of mouth and throat and their presence results it‟s in bitterness and astringent taste, but these cultivars content low oxalate, which are under permissible level [3]. Vegetable pickles are popular adjuncts in India, which are consumed regularly along with staple foods. Thus the pickles prepared with antioxidant rich elephant foot yam can provide essential nutrients like starch, carbohydrate, protein, total sugar, total soluble solids etc., which can help the rural people to eradicate malnutrition at cheaper cost. Among the tropical vegetable roots, elephant foot yam recently gains its importance in food and beverage industries worldwide [4]. It is perennial, herbaceous, C3 crops, classified under family Araceae and considered as staple/subsidiary food for about 500 million of global population, including tropical Asia of South-East Asian origin, and grows in wild form in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and African countries [5, 6]. Besides being used as a vegetable, the tubers can also be used for making pickles, dry and fry cubes, chips, flour, thickening agents etc. are gaining popularity. Elephant foot yam pickle prepared from starch rich corm by lactic fermentation would be a good prospect for commercialization in small-scale industries. Starch and carbohydrate rich elephant foot yam lacto pickle would be a novel product similar to lactic-fermented cucumber, garlic and cabbage, and its regular consumption would be helpful in combating night blindness, lever injury, aging and related ailments because of anti-oxidant principle. Lacto-pickle has a long history of uses in lactic acid (LA) fermentation [7] and is simple and useful to keep and/or enhance the safety, nutritional, sensory and shelf-life properties of vegetables [4]. The fermentation of vegetables into Lacto-pickles plays a crucial role in the food and provides nutritional security of the people of Asia [8]. Being rich in starch, carbohydrate, sugar, protein and organoleptic value, it offers a highly potential vegetable for lactic acid fermentation [9, 10]. In recent year, “Lacto-pickling” of elephant foot yam is one of the most important value-added practices through increasing the shelf stability of products, without causing too much increase in processed costs [11]. Elephant foot yam corms are consumed by many people as a food and widely used in many ayurvedic preparations [12] because it contains different bioactive components like alkaloids, flavonoids, phenols, Abstract The success of any novel food product is largely determined by the consumer acceptance of its sensory quality. Two cultivars (BCA-1 and IGMA-1) have been selected for pickle preparation due to rich in nutritional value at maturity stage and these high starch rich cultivar cubes were blanched (20 minutes at 8 kg/cm 2 ) and pickled by lactic fermentation through brining in common salt (NaCl 10-25%) solution, and finally 20% brine solution was found to be organoleptically most acceptable. The final product with standardized 20% brine solutions had a total soluble solids (20.71-33.25 O