Addition of edible insects to food products may improve the nutritional status but can also influence their techno-functional properties. This study investigates the impact of supplementing wheat flour by cricket flour or paste at different levels (5–15%) on the rheological and textural properties of flour, dough, and baked chapatti. Addition of freeze-dried cricket flour resulted in the highest water absorption. The storage modulus increased at higher level (10–15%) of supplementation to wheat flour indicating an increased dough consistency. Similarly, biaxial extension of the dough showed an increased resistance to extension and decreased extensibility at higher level of supplementation due to a reduced strength of the gluten network. Uniaxial extension of baked chapatti showed less extensible and harder chapatti with the addition of a higher amount of cricket flour or paste. At lower level (5%), incorporation of cricket flour resulted in chapatti with textural properties comparable to the reference. Oven dried cricket powder is suggested as the best option for incorporating in chapatti dough to improve food security in Asian Countries.

Fruit yogurts with three different fruit pulps (banana, papaya and watermelon) at a ratio of 5%, 10% and 15% were prepared and stored at refrigeration condition for 15 days to study the physico-chemical and organoleptic changes over storage period. Addition of fruit pulp significantly (p<0.05) affected the physico-chemical and sensorial properties of fresh yogurt samples. Low synersis value with better textural quality were found in fruit yogurt samples compared with the control sample at refrigerated storage condition. Addition of 15% banana pulp resulted in lowest synersis in yogurt among all treatments. Papaya yogurt with all ratios were found most accepted, whereas watermelon yogurt samples were found least preferred to panelists at the end of storage period. Yogurt with maximum 15% fruit pulp, and especially papaya fruit could be recommended for large scale production of fruit yogurt.

The fortification of food with edible insect flour can improve its nutrition profile, but also affect its techno-functional characteristics. In this study, an I-optimal design was applied to improve the rheological and textural properties of wheat flour chapatti containing 10% cricket (Acheta domesticus) flour. More specifically, the impact and optimal addition of hydrocolloids (carboxymethyl cellulose, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, guar gum and xanthan gum) and water content were studied. For all the responses, the model and model terms were highly significant and showed the different impact of the hydrocolloids on the rheological properties. To evaluate the predictive power of the models, two sets of optimal process settings were chosen: one based on dough properties, and another on baked chapatti. For both sets, the actual responses were in the range of predicted responses for almost all properties. In addition, it was shown that using the settings based on dough properties, the actual responses were not significantly different from the control chapatti, whereas for the settings based on baked chapatti, there were differences in terms of the extensibility of both dough and chapatti. Thus, the I-optimal design is suitable to optimize the dough properties and the baked chapatti when enriching chapatti with cricket flour.