IPB Researcher Produced Effervescent Tablet Made of Kumis Kucing
Indonesia’s rainforests are home to some of the highest levels of biological diversity in the world. Many sources credit Indonesia as the most species rich country on earth. Spread over 18,000 islands, Indonesia contains the world’s third largest area of rainforest after the Amazon and Africa’s Congo Basin. Indonesia has more plant species than any other nation, an incredible 28,000 species by most counts. Unfortunately, only about 1,000 plant species are registered in the Food and Drug Administration (BPOM) which have been used to produce functional food, especially for herbal medicine. For Indonesia as a developing economy, its comparative advantages are initially derived from its abundant natural resource endowment for developing functional food products.
One of the herbal medicine commonly found in Indonesia is Kumis kucing or Orthosiphon aristatus, under the family of Lamiaceae / Labiatae. The plant is a medicinal herb found mainly throughout southern China, the Indian Subcontinent, South East Asia and tropical Queensland. In the US it may be commonly known as cat's whiskers or Java tea. Kumis kucing is one type of medicinal plant that can be utilized as a functional beverage. However, the research on the utilization of Kumis kucing used as a base for creating various types of functional beverage formulation is very rare.
Researchers of the Department of Food Science and Technology of the Faculty of Agricultural Technology of Bogor Agricultural University (FATETA IPB), Prof. Dr. C. Hanny Wijaya, M.Agr., has been carried out the development of effervescent-based tablet products made of Kumis kucing.
Prof. Hanny Wijaya said that the purpose of her research program is to get Effervescent tablet of Kumis kucing formulation, which will be based on on panelist preferences on color and flavour. The formula must have equivalent or higher antioxidant activity compared to other traditional functional beverage products.
"Effervescence is the escape of gas from an aqueous solution and the foaming or fizzing that results from that release. The word effervescence is derived from the Latin verb fervere (to boil), preceded by the adverb ex. It has the same linguistic root as the word fermentation. Generated gas is generally carbon dioxide, although in some formulations, the resulting gas is oxygen, "she said.
Extracts of Kumis kucing and Caesalpinia sappan heartwood was made by boiling them in boiled water for 10-15 minutes. While juice of ginger and temulawak was made for extraction. The liquid extract obtained was mixed with a maltodextrin filler and dried by a vacuum drying processes. Then followed by the formulation processes and organoleptic tests are conducted using hedonic method with flavor and color parameters. Preferred formulas according to the panelists were analyzed for their antioxidant activity using the DPPH method.
"The antioxidant activity of the effervescent formula more likely to have obtained the antioxidant properties of kumis kucing extract, which is the main component of the formula," she said.
The antioxidant activity of formula A5 is similar or equal to the formula contained in commercial drinks circulating in the community. In addition, the effervescent product of A5 formula also has a higher antioxidant activity, 4 times higher than the liquid beverage formula based on kumis kucing.
"This formulation is expected to enrich the knowledge of the effervescent-based spices beverage formulation, especially kumis kucing, as an effort to utilize Indonesian herbal spices," he said. (Wied)
