Nutritional and sensory evaluation of complementary food formulated from maize, pigeon pea and Moringa stenoptela leaves in southern Ethiopia

The study was conducted to evaluate the nutritional and sensory attributes of maize based complementary food fortified with pigeon pea and Moringa stenoptela leaves. Methods of laboratory analysis and required reagents to determine each proximate composition were of analytical grade. A total of five food samples (FS1, FS2, FS3, FS4 and FS5) were formulated. The formulated five food products were evaluated for proximate composition to determine the nutritional value by using standard methods. The sensory evaluation of the prepared food sample were determined by 30 untrained breast feeding farmers from the study area. The nutritional analysis result indicated that crude protein, crude fat, moisture content, ash content, crude fiber and total carbohydrate of maize+moringa+pigeon pea fortified complementary food were ranged between 8.48-16.32%, 4.56-4.79%,4.60-4.79%, 5.5-7.8%, 1.32-2.60%, 67.21-76.38% respectively and increased significantly (p≤0.05) with the increasing amount of pigeon pea and moringa. But moisture and total carbohydrate contents decreased significantly (p≤0.05) when compared with common complementary food that was purely maize based. The sensory evaluation results indicated that appearance, taste, texture, odor and over all acceptance of semi-solid complementary food were ranged between 2.7-4.7, 2.4-4.9, 3.2-4.9, 2.6-4.7 and 1.8-4.8 respectively. The significant (p≤0.05) difference for sensory evaluation was attained for maize alone (FS1) and food sample with 10% moringa fortified with 5% pigeon pea and 85% maize (FS2), 15% moringa fortified with 10% pigeon pea and 75% maize (FS3), 20% moringa fortified with 15% pigeon pea and 65% maize(FS4) attained at p≤0.05. In conclusion, increasing moringa and reducing maize during complementary food preparation increased almost all nutrients except its moisture content. However, sensory acceptability of the sample decreased due to lack of familiarization and awareness of the evaluators in the study area.