VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

Paddy or rice is still the main staple food source of most Indonesian people. The dependency of Indonesian people on rice is the highest in the world that is equal to 139.5 kg / year. To ensure the availability of food, the stakeholders make various efforts. The government, in this case the Ministry of Agriculture, has launched a diversification of food to be run in 2018. This program is one of the efforts to reduce dependency on rice and flour. However, the replacement of rice and flour should be sourced from local commodities which are nutritious and safe for consumption.

To support food diversification program and to reduce rice consumption, lecturer of Bogor Agricultural Institute (IPB) West Java, utilized lindur (Bruguiera gymnorrhiza) as an analog-making-material rice by combining it with sago and chitosan. Analog rice is rice that is produced not by planting in rice fields, but bring produced in the factory by processing from existing food ingredients.

This innovation is done by Prof. Dr. Ir. Nurjanah, MS, lecturer as well as Professor of Aquatic Product Technology, Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Sciences (FPIK) Bogor Agricultural Institute (IPB) with two colleagues -Taufik Hidayat and Pipih Suptijah. This discovery is one of Prof. Nurjanah’s four works that was selected as four of the 109 Indonesian innovations in 2017 announced by BIC (Business Innovation Center) on 9 August 2017.

Lindur fruit used is one type of mangroves, that is commonly found in Indonesia and has the same carbohydrate with rice. According to Nurjanah, her team uses lindur fruit because this fruit is a source of carbohydrates, especially the abundant production in Indonesia. Nurjanah added that one of the efforts to avoid rice dependency of Indonesian people is to diversify food by using local carbohydrate source as food product such as analog rice.

Meanwhile, Taufik Hidayat added that this analogue rice contains many fibers and is very suitable consumed by diabetics. The team chose a combination of lindur-fruit with sago because according to him sago has important commodities that have not been utilized optimally. In addition, Prof. Nurjanah also uses chitosan as a binder and stabilizer. Chitosan is a natural polymer compound isolated from aquaculture waste such as shrimp, crab shells and others. Taufik explained that chitosan has the same properties as synthetic texture formers that can improve the appearance and texture of a product because it has a strong water and oil binding power and heat resistance. From the results of Prof. Nurjanah and two colleagues’ research, it ia found that lindur powder can be an alternative substitution of wheat because it contains a high carbohydrate that is 86.10 percent. While the best analog rice formulation is a combination of 70 percent of lindur flour, 30 percent sago flour, and chitosan 0.5 percent.