IPB Students Utilizes Silver Catfish Bone to Enrich Mineral Content in Rastra Red Rice
Students of Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), Vegatarani Aulia Azzahra, Ayu Septi Wulandari, and Lisa Al under the supervision of Bambang Riyanto, SPi, MSi conducted a study about fortification or enrichment of Rastra red rice with fishbone nanocalcium. This study was proposed to Students Creativity Program in Research (PKM PE) 2018. According to Vegatarani, currently there are many elderly people who are still in poverty. To fulfil their nutrition needs, they rely on subsidised rice (raskin), currently known as Rastra, from the government. However, nutritional content of this rice is not enough for their needs, while on the other hand elderly people need higher mineral content, especially calcium, in their food. Because of that reason, the team suggested an idea to help fulfilling calcium needs of elderly people by fortifying mineral content of Rastra rice using silver catfish-bone nanocalcium.
“We also see that silver catfish bone from fillet industry is not utilized optimally. We attempted to utilize the fishbone waste as something that has added value. After we studied it, it was found that silver catfish bone contains a high calcium content, which is 2.879 miligrams per kilogram of bone,” explained Vegatarani.
“In addition, we choose to utilize nanocalcium because calcium in micro size can only be absorbed partially, around 50 percent of total calcium that is consumed. Smaller size of calcium will make the absorption more optimal,” Vegatarani added.
Vegatarani explained that this study aims to enrich mineral content of Rastra red rice through innovation that is titled ‘Fortification of Fishbone Nanocalcium to Improve Rastra Red Rice Program’. In addition, this study also aims to increase the consumption of red rice, which is still low currently, despite the rich nutritional content of red rice when compared to white rice.
The results of the study showed that the proximate result of ash content from silver catfish-bone flour is around 56.62 percent. This showed that silver catfish bone contains quite high mineral content. The calcium content itself is 2.879 miligrams per kilogram. The calcium extracted from this study sizes 80 nanometers. The treatment with the best results in this study is the one that uses red rice as much as 82 percent, sagoo flour as much as 15 percent, glycerol monostearate as much as 1 percent, nanocalcium flour as much as 2 percent, and water as much as 30 percent. The rice produced is similar to analog rice. However, the calcium content is higher, which is 0.90 percent or 900 miligrams per 100 grams rice per day. The calcium content in this rice is able to fulfil calcium needs for elderly people, according to Nutrition Fulfilment Rate (AKG), which is between 800-1000 miligrams per day.
“We hope that this innovation can help elderly people to fulfil their calcium needs, so they will avoid many diseases caused by lack of calcium,” said Vegatarani. (Ard)
