Ms Shivani Kumari, a Ph.D student from the Department of Food and Nutrition, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), has been conferred with the “Best Oral Presentation Award” at the 6th International Conference on Food and Nutrition, organised by the Universal Society of Food and Nutrition on October 25 and 26. She was awarded for the paper entitled “Hull-less pumpkin seed fortified pasta: Nutritional profiling, phytochemicals and bioactive characteristics,” authored by Shivani Kumari, Sonika Sharma, Kiran Grover, Ajmer Singh Dhatt, Sanjula Sharma and Jaspreet Kaur. Ms Shivani is pursuing her Ph.D on the topic “Development and nutritional evaluation of functional foods from hull-less pumpkin seed oil and press cake” under the guidance of Dr Sonika Sharma, Professor, Department of Food and Nutrition, PAU.
Dr Sharma explained that hull-less pumpkin seeds (PAU Magaz Kadoo 1), the first of their kind in Indian history, have not yet been evaluated for their potential for functional food development. Fortification of pasta with hulless pumpkin seed (HPS) had substantially enhanced the protein (14.88%), fibre (5.08%), ash (2.72%) and fat (9.87%) content, with the highest antioxidant activity (31.13%). The mineral content i.e. iron (4.58 mg/100 g), zinc (5.04 mg/100 g), calcium (39.21 mg/100 g) and fatty acids such as Palmitic (2.96%), Stearic (2.16%) and Oleic acid (15.14%)] enhanced in HPS pasta as compared to pasta developed from semolina, she added. The pasta with 30% HPS were found to have the greatest overall acceptability, thus hulless pumpkin seed could be used as a functional component for the development of health foods, she observed.
Dr Satbir Singh Gosal, Vice-Chancellor, PAU and Dr Kiran Grover, Head, Department of Food and Nutrition, congratulated the student for her achievement.
Read more: https://www.pau.edu/index.php?_act=manageEvent&DO=viewEventDetail&dataE=datae&intID=8282
