ASSESSMENT OF MICROBIOLOGICAL QUALITY AND ORGANOLEPTIC CHANGE ON STORAGE DURATION OF STANDARDIZED COOKIES PREPARED BY BLEND OF LOTUS STEM POWDER WITH REFINED WHEAT FLOUR FOR DETERMINATION OF ITS SHELF LIFE

Incorporating the under-consumed super food ingredients rich in nutrients or functional compounds is a growing concern in healthcare product formulation. Health-ensuring cookies blend with Nelumbonucifera (Lotus) stem powder were standardized in the laboratory and found its acceptable form with comparatively higher acceptability and good flavour profile. Safety assurance is also a part of product development to assure and instruct the consumer regarding its life span or safe consumption time on storage duration. Therefore, the study further aimed at to- Aims and Objective: 1. To assess the quality of lotus stem cookies in terms of microbiological and organoleptic aspects. 2. To assess the impact of the growth of microorganisms in cookies prepared through blend of lotus stem powder. Methodology: Keeping quality of this formulated product has been assessed by enumerating the total bacteria, yeast and mould count in between a fixed time duration (0 – 90 days) and assessing its sensory qualities. AOAC (1994) suggested techniques (microbiological count assessment) and 9 point hedonic scale to observe the flavour profile were used for this purpose. Obtained data had been statistically analyzed using ANOVA, t-test statistics etc. Results and Discussion: The microbial growth rate had increased at high rate after 3 months as total plate count (TPC) was enumerated. The initial count of bacteria of freshly prepared cookies was 0cfu/g and during 90th days of storage, the bacterial activity was increased, and their count was obtained as 4.6 × 105cfu/g (mean value of TPC). It comes under the range of borderline count of safe limit and indicates that the microbial status of the product found to be safe according to its standard value. At the same time, the mean value of yeast & mould count of these fortified cookies was 0 cfu/g on the day of preparation, which increased to 4.8×104cfu/g on the 90th day of storage. Because of the polyethylene (0.11 mm thickness) packaging and sealed by hand sealing machine and low moisture content of the product, their yeast mould count had risen under safe limits on <90 days during storage. As p-value (<0.05), the cookies prepared by incorporating lotus stem had better microbiological quality than control cookies. The sensory quality analysis of the product revealed that the mean scores of colour, texture, taste, flavour and overall acceptability attributes showed minutely decline scores during storage days. Still, these scores were stable in very good (8) to good range. It may be due to increased microbial activities on 90th day of storage. Conclusion: The association of days of storage duration with increments of total viable numbers was showed statistically significant at 5% level. Therefore it can be concluded that the quality of product determined as <90days had good acceptability and safety from the consumption point of view.