President asks researchers to come up with better food technology

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told the agriculture minister and governors to challenge researchers and other Indonesians to compete for a substantial cash prize to develop formulas for the production of noodles made from local materials.

"Please develop noodles that are made of local -- instead of imported -- materials. We have cassavas, sweet potatoes, corn and other staple foods," he said before presenting the 2007 National Food Security awards at the State Palace in Jakarta on Thursday.

"Noodles have the potential to replace rice," Yudhoyono was quoted as saying by Detik.com newsportal, saying the official competition to modify noodles would begin early in 2008.

Currently noodles in Indonesia are made of imported wheat flour.

The awards were given to the governors of East Java, Jambi, Riau, South Sumatra, South Sulawesi and Yogyakarta, as well as to 11 regents, a mayor, 108 farmers groups and 30 farming officials.

At a separate event scientists announced they had found a cheaper substitute for the raw material of the ubiquitous Indonesian tempe, a protein-rich cake made from soybeans, which Indonesia currently imports from the United States.

"Indonesia and Australia have been successful in making tempe from lupin, a kind of bean that grows in Australia," said program leader of the Food Science and Technology School of Public Health at the Curtin University of Technology in Australia, Prof. Vijay Jayasena.

"The cost of the lupin bean is less than half the cost of imported American soybeans," he said at a seminar at the Australian Embassy on the development of food science and technology in Indonesia.

The joint research on lupin-based tempe was a cooperative effort between Curtin University and the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI).

Director of LIPI's chemical research center, LB Sugeng Kardono, said lupin beans couldn't grow properly in Indonesia.

"We tried to grow them at LIPI, but the plants were always beanless," he said.

Lupin is the common name for members of the genus Lupinus in the legume family (Fabaceae). There are more than 200 species of lupin.

Australia is the largest lupin producer at more than 984,000 tons a year, accounting for the lion's share of the world's annual production of some 1.15 million tons.

Vijay and Kardono also presented other recent developments in the field of food science and technology, introducing several food processing technologies to an audience of biology and chemistry students.

Vijay described a variety of methods, including high pressure processing, irradiation, extrusion, intelligent packaging using time and temperature indicators, active packaging, micro capsulation and ozone treatment, all of which are commonly used in other countries.

Kardono said the methods hadn't been implemented in Indonesia because they were costly.

"These methods do not necessarily need a costly high-tech investment, just local instruments and the willingness to think outside the box," Vijay said.

He cited the example of an extrusion machine developed by researchers and the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand. They were able to build the machine for one-tenth of the usual cost of US$180,000 for an imported machine.

Kardono added that LIPI was currently focusing on creating food that has an added health value, like vitamin-enriched food and curries that can fight cholesterol. (lva)