Extrusion of banana starch: Characterization of the extrudates

Extrusion of banana starch was carried out for obtaining extrudates with functional and digestibility characteristics. Experimental design with temperature, screw speed and moisture content as independent variables produced 20 experiments that were studied using response surface methodology to discover the effect of these variables on resistant starch content, water absorption index and water solubility index. The amylose content was 37.4% with high resistant starch (RS) content in the ungelatinized sample, which decreased when banana starch was gelatinized (1.9%). Extrudate samples had a higher RS content than the gelatinized native starch, showing that the extrusion process increased RS content of native starch due to starch depolymerization and during cooling of extrudates those linear chains form an arrangement that cannot be hydrolyzed by α-amylase. The response surface regression model fitted to experimental results of resistant starch showed good determination coefficient (84%). During model validation for RS, the model explains the experimental results up to 90%. Response surface showed that water absorption index values were high when the temperature, moisture content and screw speed were also high; water solubility values were not affected by screw speed, and both temperature and moisture content had a quadratic effect. Cylindrical structures were observed in powders where RS was present and as RS level increased the cylinders became coarser.