Agricultural Research Journal

Shelf life studies of food products are gaining momentum due to the consumer's awareness towards quality of the packaged products. Experiments were conducted to assess the keeping quality and shelf life of carrot pomace-chickpea incorporated rice based snacks. The extruded snacks using ingredients: rice flour, chickpea flour, carrot pomace powder and cheese powder in the proportion of 75: 11.25: 11.25: 2.5 respectively was developed under optimized conditions of 440 rpm screw speed, 150°C die temperature and 24 kg/h feed rate. The developed snacks were exposed to different packaging treatments and stored under room conditions. The stored samples were evaluated for its moisture content, protein content, hardness, overall acceptability and color attributes at a regular interval for six months. Effect of storage period was more prominent than the packaging treatments. Moisture content, protein content and color attributes were significantly affected by the storage period and treatments (p<0.05). The quality of snacks was acceptable up to six months in all the packaging treatments. Vacuum packed aluminium laminate samples were found to be best throughout the storage period witnessing highest (84.90%) overall acceptability.