IPB's corn noodles win int'l contest

Novia D. Rulistia , The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Sun, 07/19/2009 11:27 AM | Discover

Students of the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) started producing instant corn noodle to alleviate malnutrition-related health problems and the product won the international food technology contest.

Galih Nugroho, Ari Try Purbayanto, Riza Aris Apriady, Kamalita Pertiwi and Catherine Haryasyah produced instant corn noodle which has been fortified with various microorganism.

They presented their 6-page paper on the innovation at the IFP Annual Meeting and Food Expo organized by the Institute of Technologists in the United States. Their innovation ranked third in the competition, after the Netherlands and South Africa.

"We're so excited. It's a tough competition but we know we were ready to compete and we knew we could compete as we've prepared at our utmost," Galih said.

"We have done some research about many health problems in Southeast Asia countries and we found that there are still many cases about food nutrition deficiency. So we decided to take this as our case," said the eight semester student at IPB's food technology study.

To make it more specific, he said, the group focused on food nutrition deficiency in pregnant women as most cases were found in them.

"They are the medium to carry the micro nutrition for their future babies," he said.

Through the product, Galih said, the mothers-to-be could consume a lot of nutrition up to three times a week which were important during pregnancy.

Corn noodle was first brought on to research table in 1998 with several researchers from IPB involved in the project.

To make the noodle, the team use corn flour and mixed it with protein-fortified egg flour and add to it several nutrition. Next, the dough is undergoing an extrusion process, a process to create a certain texture by pressing all materials.

The production takes around one-and-a-half to two hours.

"The process is not that hard, the ingredients are affordable so that the price of the noodle is also affordable," said Galih, adding that its economical side was one of the reasons they won the contest.

The other considerations were because they make the full use of local resources, the technology can be easily used by people, and of their free-preservative but full of protein product.

Although the five have got international acknowledgement for the innovation, further research is still needed to optimize the instant corn noodle before it hits the market.

"We hope with this, the death of pregnant women suffering from malnutrition can be decreasing."

Minister of Agriculture Anton Apriyantono said during a recent ceremony to honor the achievement that the government was encouraging industry players to adopt the new technology so that the product could be soon available in the community.