Paper Title
Studies on the Development of Microwave Puffed Product from Taro

Abstract
The snack food is one of the most important items of the food industry. Designing snack foods today can be a complex process to meet changing consumers taste and expectations of something unique to a wide variety of peoples. Taro Tubers are perennial, tropical plant mostly grown as root vegetable and belongs to a family Plantae. Among tubers, Taro is the only one that can contain deficient amount of starch granules which are highly digestible in nature. Starch content of Taro ranges between 70 to 80 percent. In recent years, Microwave heating process has got wide spread importance in preparing food products in industries. Ready to eat (RTE) foods were developed with high temperature short time (HTST) Microwave power puffing process. Dough sheet pieces prepared from Taro and refined flour in the ratio 5: 20, were cut in round shapes and then puffed in Microwave oven having maximum power of 900 W. The effect of process parameters such as Microwave power (MP= 540 and 720 W) Microwave Heating time (Mt = 30, 40 to 50 s) on the quality of product was investigated by conducting experiments using completely randomized design (CRD). The optimal quality with respect to acceptable hardness (HD), expansion ratio (ER) and crispness (CSP) were observed at Microwave power of 540 W with process time of 40 s. Keywords - Microwave puffing, Taro, Refined Flour, Optimization