Abstract
A study pertaining to the effect of various physico-chemical treatments such as soaking, heating and autoclaving on reduction in antinutritional factors such as tannins and trypsin inhibitors in chickpea grains and improvement in vitro protein digestibility was undertaken in 1997. The proximate composition of chickpea grain was: moisture 9.30%, crude protein 22.93%, crude fat 3.20%, crude fibre 5.40 and ash 3.30%. Average content of nitrogen free extract was 65.17%. In general, increasing soaking time from 4 hours to overnight significantly reduced tannin contents. Water soaking and 1% NaHC03 removed about 50% tannins, whereas 1% NaCl removed only 39%. The results suggest that soaking is better than heating and autoclaving in reducing the antinutritional factors in chickpea grains. Key words: antinutritional substances in chickpea, autoclaving, heating, soaking
