Sporicidal Treatments to Produce Germinated Finger Millet

Aims: The current investigation was to ascertain the most efficient sporicidal treatment for germinated finger millet in order to inactivate the spores that could interfere with the fermentation process by acting as a competing microflora for starter culture during the manufacturing of probiotic millet food.

Study Design: By applying different dry and wet sporicidal treatments to the finger millet, the study attempted to inactivate the spores and create germinated finger millet. Following each treatment, the number of aerobic spores was enumerated by the pour plate technique.

Place and Duration of Study: Department of Dairy Microbiology, Dairy Science College, Hebbal, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India between June 2023 and April 2024.

Methodology: Both wet and dry sporicidal treatments were used. It comprised of blanching, autoclaving, hot air oven treatment and the combined treatment of hot air oven and autoclaving.

Results: Aerobic spore count were reduced from 3.86 to 1.00 log10 cfu/g after autoclaving finger millet for 30 min at 121℃. Considering that the autoclaving procedure did not encourage germination, sporicidal and fungicidal treatments were followed for 48 h germinated finger millet. After autoclaving germinated finger millet flour, the initial counts of spores and fungus which were 4.98 and 3.56 log10 cfu/g were completely eliminated. Statistically significant (P=.05) difference was found between the treatment sample and the control.

Conclusion: Autoclaving the germinated finger millet flour at 121℃ for 15 min resulted in a complete reduction of spores and fungus count. Hence, this treatment was followed during the preparation of probiotic millet food.