Vol. 9, Issue 4, Part E (2025)

Extrusion cooking is a high-temperature, short-time process, was used to develop ready-to-eat extruded snacks from industrial by-products and moringa leaf powder. Composite flour was prepared using broken rice powder, defatted soybean meal, and moringa leaf powder in varying proportions. A laboratory twin-screw extruder was employed and a central composite rotatable design (CCRD) was used to optimize the process. The independent variables included feed proportion (85:10:5 to 65:25:10), feed rate (9-13 kg/h), screw speed (200-400 rpm), and barrel temperature (100-160 °C). Thirty treatments were conducted to evaluate the effects on dependent variables such as moisture content, expansion ratio, bulk density, true density, Porosity, water activity, and Water absorption index. Response surface methodology (RSM) was applied to optimize the process with an R² of >0.60 and generate second-order regression models for the dependent variables. ANOVA was used to examine the statistical significance of the terms in the regression equation. (p<0.0001) was the probability (p) value of RSM. The optimal conditions were determined as follows: feed proportion (75:17.5:7.5), feed rate (11 kg/h), screw speed (300 rpm), and barrel temperature (145 °C). Under these conditions, the optimized extruded product exhibited desirable properties, including a moisture content of 5.62%, expansion ratio of 2.99, bulk density of 121.88 kg/m³, true density of 1251.94 kg/m³, Porosity 90.26% water activity of 0.4035 and water Absorption Index 7.01. The desirability for optimum solution is 0.847. This study provides a viable solution for reducing industrial waste while producing extruded snacks of desired physical and functional quality.