Christina Winarti, Widaningrum, Siti Mariana Widayanti, Nurdi Setyawan, Qanytah, Juniawati, Esty Asriyana Suryana, and S Widowati. Prev Nutr Food Sci 2023;28:471-82. https://doi.org/10.3746/pnf.2023.28.4.471

East Nusa Tenggara/NTT has been known as one of the poorest provinces in Indonesia which has a dry climate with very low rainfall. Poor food security is partly due to community dependence on rice as a staple food while rice cannot grow well in NTT. These also has an impact on the poor nutritional status of the community, such as the high prevalence of stunting. Sorghum previously was cultivated as a local food however, it had long been abandoned. Fortunately, nowadays sorghum began to consume again by the community. This paper presents the potential and challenges faced in developing sorghum as a staple food and raw material for industry in NTT, especially in East Flores. The data and information was collected from the survey, secondary sources as well as journal and personal communication with sorghum stakeholders. After a long time being forgotten, sorghum has grown back about a decade ago. Various local varieties of sorghum are in NTT and have been identified. The main focus of the development of sorghum is that the community re-consumes sorghum, only a small portion is sold. Likotuden is a complete center for developing sorghum from the supply of seeds, cultivation to processing and marketing of sorghum seeds. The factor of rapid development of sorghum is supported by various parties, including NGOs, local government, central government and universities. The extent of marginal land in NTT, the availability of sorghum superior seeds, the suitability of agro ecology and socio-economic and cultural sorghum with various functional advantages will foster the development of sorghum. Besides, the support of local government programs such as the pajaleso program (corn rice, soybean plus sorghum) sorghum will be foster the development sorghum in NTT. However, some obstacles are still found, among others, the need for agriculture machineries, both pre-harvest for land preparation and planting and post-harvest. In addition, socialization and training also need to be encouraged, especially in areas where other food crops are difficult to grow.

Arrowroot and taro are underutilized tuber. Modification of starch into starch nanoparticles will open to opportunities for further development. The aim of this research was to find out the influence of acid types and hydrolysis length on the characteristics of the resulted starch nanoparticle. There were group of treatments including source of starch: arrowroot and taro beneng starch, and the acid types was HCland H2SO4, and the length of hydrolysis was 3 and 5 hours. The results showed that the yield of arrowroot nanoparticle starch was higher than taro, 21.64 - 34.44% and 33.83 - 51.22%, respectively. Hydrolysis with HCl and H2SO4 produced starch nanoparticles (NP) with different characteristics. Treatment with HCl provides higher yield than that of H2SO4, but particle size was larger. The average size of the taro and arrowroot starch nanoparticles produced by hydrolysis by H2SO4 was 379.2 nm and 464.4 nm, respectively, with high polydispersity index of 0.480 and 0.621. Meanwhile, the crystallinity of taro and arrowroot starch NP increased from 44.1 into 87.3% and 43.5% into 51.3%, respectively. Acid hydrolysis improved solubility of starch nanoparticles but decreased the swelling power and gelatinization temperature. Starch nanoparticles can be implemented as a reinforcing agent for packaging, and carrier material for phytochemicals or agro-chemicals.

Hydrogels are cross-linked polymers networks with high absorbing water capacity and good biocompatibility. It has been widely used as an agrochemical delivery system as well to increase the efficiency of fertilizer by releasing lower dose at a time thus protecting the environment. This research aims was to study the effect of NPK fertilizer concentration on hydrogel characteristics. The raw material used in this study was corn cobs nanocellulose. The experiment was set up in one way completely randomized design with various kinds of dose fertilizes (0, 5, 10, and 15%) with three replicates. Parameters observed were swelling ratio, moisture content, nitrogen content, potassium content, phosphorus content, texture and surface morphology. The enriched hydrogel was applied as a soil conditioner and fertilizer for chili crops. The results of analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that the various kinds of dose fertilizer significantly influenced their physicochemical properties (p<0.05). The higher the fertilizer concentration added, the lower the swelling ratio. The addition of fertilizer with dose 5% resulted the highest swelling ratio. This product consists of 15.82% moisture content, 1.81% of nitrogen content, 1.57% of potassium content, 0.04% of phosphorus content, and 25.17 mJ of hardness.