In addition to the presence of antinutrients, the inferior physicochemical properties of flours has caused gadung (Dioscorea hispida dennst) becomes one of the underutilized tubers in the world. Acetylation is one of the starch modification methods to alter the physicochemical properties of starch, namely swelling power and solubility. The objective of this work was to investigate the effect of reaction time, glacial acetic acid/flour mass ratio and pH on gadung flour acetylation at ambient temperature. The acetylation was carried out by reacting gadung flour slurry of 20 % consistency with glacial acetic acid under alkaline condition. The results show that in general degree of substitution and swelling power increased with the increase of reaction time, while the solubility was not affected by reaction time after 10 min acetylation. Acetylation led to significant changes in morphology and structure of gadung flour starch granules. Overall, all the acetylated gadung flours obtained in this work were having higher swelling power and solubility than the native flour. Acetylation of gadung flour using glacial acetic acid with 1:3 mass ratio and pH 8.0 at ambient temperature for 30 min resulted gadung flours with swelling power and solubility similar to that of Korean wheat flour.
Keywords: Acetylation; Degree of substitution; Gadung flour; Morphology; Solubility; Swelling power.