Turning Orchids into Food: A Team of UMM Earns the Medals of the 35th PIMNAS Event

Author : Humas | Wednesday, December 07, 2022 09:34 WIB

Syntiya Inanda Khoidir, Rika Cahyani Irjayanti, Annisa Jihan Purnama and Nastiar Majidatun Wakhidah successfully earned silver medals in the PKM-RE category. (Foto: Istimewa)

The PIMNAS agenda (Translated: National Student Scientific Week) is students’ most anticipated event because it is notably a means for them to convey creative ideas and earn achievements. It was done by one of the teams from the University of Muhammadiyah Malang, who participated in the PIMNAS event. The team successfully won second place in poster class in the Students’ Creativity Program in Exact Research (PKM-RE) category during the 35th event of PIMNAS held at the beginning of December. The students representing the team were Syntiya Inanda Khoidir, Rika Cahyani Irjayanti, Annisa Jihan Purnama, and Nastiar Majidatun Wakhidah, enrolled in Food Science and Technology from the Faculty of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry of UMM.

The team leader, Syntiya Inanda Khoidir, said they do not expect the proposal they submitted to be approved for the PIMNAS funding. Primarily, they have handed in the proposal for two years, but luck has not approached them yet. However, they were surprised when the proposal was funded and even passed the PIMNAS selection until the team successfully earned medals.

“I feel amazed and grateful. Finally, our hard work we thought will be failed, in fact, gave the maximal result,”, Syntiya uttered.

Syntiya, familiarly called, explained that their research discusses the Potency of the Phenolic Extract of Cymbidium Golden Boy Orchid as Antioxidants in Manufacturing Flower Leather. The research finding indicates that the phenol levels of orchids have higher antioxidant content. This substance is beneficial for humans to prevent free radicals inside body organs.

“The reason we chose orchids to conduct research is because we feel comfortable with them basically. An orchid itself has a unique taste like a lettuce especially we perceive that there is still little research about decorative plants utilised as food crops.”, she said.

The 2001-born student told her story that the research was conducted for five months. It started from their experience of seeking the freshest orchid, followed by their effort to dry the flower to phenol extract to get the antioxidant content. Next, it was processed into jelly or sweets.

Throughout their research, they encountered obstacles like its brittle texture and unattractive colour. However, we could trick it by adding citric acid to shape the colour and adding hydrocolloids to stabilise the texture.

“We are luck to study at UMM which always supports its students’ creativity and innovation. Many student institutions which become a place for us like LSO Hipotesa (Translated: The Semi-Autonomous Institutions of Hypothesis) and lecturers who are ready to asks a question when encountering difficulties. The support of family and friends also motivates us to keep making achievements,” she expressed.

She and her team not only want the research conducted to win medals at the PIMNAS event but also to develop a proper formula so that it can be one of the national food crops. “We also want to encourage other students to enliven the PIMNAS event. More proposals must be submitted to enable more teams to participate in next year’s PIMNAS event,” she said while hoping. (imh/zak/wil)