Impact of irradiation on nutritional quality and functional properties of soy flour and sprouted soy flour

Irradiation is recommended as a safe and effective food processing method that can be used to preserve foods and reduce the risk of food poisoning and contamination without any detoriation of health with minimum effect on nutritional quality of food. Soy protein is the only vegetable whose protein is complete. Recently the popularity of soy protein is increasing mainly because it contains soy-isoflavones which are antioxidants. Soybean also contains some anti-nutritional factors like Trypsin inhibitors, phytates which can be reduced by sprouting, roasting process. The present investigation was carried out to study the effect of radiation processing nutritional quality, functional properties like absorption capacity and acceptability of soy flour and sprouted soy flour and compared with non-Irradiated soy and sprouted soy flours. Protein, fibre, and total antioxidants content found to be statistically not significant between irradiated and non-Irradiated soy flours. The increase content was found to be statistically significant (p<0.05) between irradiated and non-Irradiated sprouted soy flours at 1 month of storage period. It can be concluded from the findings of the whole study that both radiation and sprouting processing does not affect the quality of foods. In addition improves the protein content, antioxidant content and absorption capacities at 1kgy radiation dose and also decreases the anti-nutritional factors to great extents.