PPROCESSING PURPLE SWEET POTATO TO BE HEALTHY RICH IN ANTIOXIDANT SNACK AS SPECIAL GIFT FROM PENGLIPURAN TOURISM VILLAGE

Anak Agung Istri Sri Wiadnyani

Departement of Food Technology

Faculty of Agriculture Technology

Udayana University-Bali

sriwiadnyani@unud.ac.id

Today society trend in selecting and consuming food is not only for satisfying stomach or giving pleasant with delicious taste and interesting aesthetic, but also consider physiological effect for body consuming functional-valued food. Increase in disease prevalence in last decades has triggered change in people attitude toward preventing disease and living healthy life. Functional food is one due to its bioactive component giving benefit for health beside benefit from its nutrient content.

Bali has various local food stuffs such as tubers. One of them is purple sweet potato. Purple sweet potato may become high carbohydrate source (83.81%) when processed to be flour (Djami, 2007). Purple colour of purple sweet potato comes from natural pigment having potential as functional food stuff. Pigment anthocyanin gives very good health effect as natural antioxidant reactive in fighting free-radical that can minimize degenerative diseases risk (Jiao et al., 2012). Processing purple sweet potato to be various delicious, nutritious and healthy processed foods to reduce food dependence over wheat is interesting matter and is necessary to study. Purple sweet potato may be processed to be white bread (Hardoko et al., 2010), instant noodles (Santosa et al., 2015) and even dental plaque identifying substance (Ekoningtyas et al., 2016).

In Penglipuran Traditional village of Bangli regency there is women farmer group (KTW) Mawar Langgeng Sari that has processed purple sweet potato into other food. However, the problem is that there was only one type of processed food from purple sweet potato although purple sweet potato may be processed to be various products with high economic value. Purple sweet potato was still processed with simple method, without packaging that caused short shelf life and less interesting appearance for sale. In addition, production process was done incidentally when there was an order or in certain religious days. In other side, Penglipuran Traditional village is a worldly known tourism destination due to its uniqueness. About 500 domestic and foreign tourists visited the village every day and it was more at holidays. It was very good market potential to market special food product of the village as gift that may be distributed whole world. Based on problem KWT Panglipuran village faced and potential the village had, the author and the Community Service Team using the 2014 HIBAH DIKTI fund have done actions of assistance and companying KWT in Penglipuran village. The activities were intended to make food products with purple sweet potato raw material as special food gift from Penglipuran tourism village. 

Problem solving methods used included introduction and training on making food from purple sweet potato, packaging, shelf life determination, opening people mindset to be entrepreneur to increase household economy, and assistance in license process at Health office (and related institutions).  They were conducted through tutorial method, training of making purple sweet potato processed food, and accompanying at production process and marketing process.

Results of the assistance activities are processing purple sweet potato to be biscuit, dodol, syrup, and jam. KWT Mawar Langgeng Sari has been able to make the processed food well. Packaging and labeling was also done well and yielded product with interesting identity and appearance. Entrepreneurship spirit of KWT member increased that finally it is expected to increase Penglipuran people income and welfare. Target of the activities have been realized with following indications: capable of processing purple sweet potato to be various products such as biscuit, dodol, syrup and jam with trademarks bisela, dosela, sirela and hamela and capable of independently producing healthy rich in antioxidant snack as special gift from Penglipuran Tourism Village. (https://youtu.be/bEJjwi8hulU).