Pardeshi I. L.Swami S. B.Ranveer R. C.Kadam J. H.Patange S. B.KATKAR KSHAMA CHANDRAKANT2024-11-092024-11-092022-11https://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810216162Hot air puffing is simplest, hazard and contamination free and quickest method, wherein grains are suddenly exposed to high temperature for short time (HTST) process and get puffed. The continuous hot air puffing system comprising of grain feeder, heating chamber, puffing chamber, cyclone separator, and recirculation pipe, was developed. The experiments conducted using Central Composite Rotatable Design, on pre-processed rice (cv. MTU 1010), with one pre-heating pass of 11.54 (±2.10) s at 150 °C, showed that puffed rice can be produced optimally at pre-fixed whirling air velocity of 4.75 (±0.25) m/s, puffing air temperature of 260 ℃ and with feed rate of 6500 g/h resulting into final moisture content (MC, %db), expansion ratio (ER), puffing percentage (PP, %), whiteness index (WI), hardness (HD, kg) and Crispness (+ve peaks) as 3.71, 5.68, 95.87, 69.82, 32.12 and 89.81, respectively. Further increased time of preheating upto 46 s (4 passes) at 150 °C keeping all other puffing parameters unchanged, resulted into improved quality puffed rice with final moisture content (MC, %db), expansion ratio (ER), puffing percentage (PP, %), and whiteness index (WI) of 2.68, 7.35, 99.58% and 87.76, respectively. The Konkan rice variety of Karjat-5 ensured the production of best quality puffed rice with MC, ER, PP, WI as 1.99% db, 7.36, 99.50 % and 87.76, respectively.EnglishThesis