**5.3 Development of third-generation snacks**

*Recent Advances in Rice Research*

overall food and nutrition security of the populace.

and behaves physiologically like dietary fibre [46], rice-based extruded snacks in Africa have received satisfactory acceptability among consumers that are concerned with nutritional quality of food they eat. As a result, therefore, the application of extrusion cooking is increasingly becoming popular for snack production in Africa using raw materials such as rice [28, 43], sorghum [47], and millet [48] containing protein, starch and dietary fibre in an effort to create novel food products such as snacks with a more adequate nutritional value. This new product is expected to improve rice postharvest system through qualitative loss reduction and improve

In some instance, it has been demonstrated that when crushed and pulverized, extruded broken rice fractions could be used as porridge or weaning foods. Danbaba *et al* [21, 28] introduced extruded ready-to-eat rice porridge (**Figure 5**) as part of valorisation of low quality broken rice fractions after blending with appropriate amount of legume flour. Protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) and micronutrient deficiency is a severe problem facing developing countries and particularly children

*Production of extruded high protein-energy weaning porridge from blends of broken rice and cowpea.*

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**Figure 5.**

The increased demand by more consumers for gluten-free products has over the few decades necessitated the quest for suitable alternative raw materials to wheat for the production of third-generation snacks, and the use of rice flour is gaining greater interest because of its favourable attributes of negligible gluten content, good expansion during extrusion and bland taste [56]. Third-generation snacks (3G), also called semi or half products, during production undergo cooking after extrusion and are dried to a stable moisture content (approximately 12%) and then expanded by frying in hot oil, puffing in hot air or microwaving and infrared heating as new variants [57]. In developed world or where extrusion cooking technology has gained popularity, 3G snacks are common. After expansion products are spiced with various types of spices and then packaged and sold as ready-to-eat (RTE) snacks [57]. The products can also be flavoured before expansion and sold as pellets, for preparation at home [58]. In Nigeria, under a strategy to improve postharvest quality of rice, especially poor quality rice varieties having poor parboiling characteristics, kernels are converted to high quality flour of specific particle size and used innovatively for the production of 3G snacks (**Figure 6**) that are current popular among snack producers in many African countries [21].

**Figure 6.** *Some rice-based 3G snacks produced from low grade broken rice flour.*

Cold forming extrusion (40–70°C, 60–90 bar) of pre-gelatinized rice flour blended legume flour is used for the production of rice-based 3G snacks. Adjusting extrusion temperature, residence time and initial ingredient moisture facilitate complete gelatinization of starch component of the ingredients before frying [57, 59, 60]. Extruded snacks from rice will significantly take some market share as more and more countries in Africa are increasingly improving their rice production and more consumers are becoming more interested in non-gluten baked snacks. Badau *et al.* [61] state that the addition of 30% cowpea to rice flour for the production of traditional Nigeria snack (*Garabia*) significantly improves protein content, metabolizable energy and vitamin B2, while consumer rating based on 9-point hedonic scales was above 6.0 indicating that with the addition of cowpea, the snacks are well-liked by consumers.
