A study was conducted to enhance the nutritional quality of a widely used infant weaning food ‘Maize gruel’ with mungbean (Vigna radiata). Toasting as a treatment was applied in processing mungbean seed to flour (MBF), while the maize gruel (Akamu) was processed using the standard method, later dried in an oven at 600C for 24 hours to obtain flour sample (MG). A composite flour of different proportion levels were obtained from mungbean /maize flour, representing sample A (50 MG: 50 MBF); B (60 MG: 40 MBF); C (70 MG: 30 MBF) and D (100 % MG). The different food samples were subjected to chemical analysis (proximate, minerals and anti nutrient); sensory evaluation of reconstituted weaning food samples and analysis of microbial load on storage. The chemical composition analysis revealed protein content of 15.35 %, 13.55%, 14.76%, and 4.25% for samples A, B, C, and D, respectively. The anti-nutrient (phytate, saponnin, tannin and alkaloids) contained in the weaning food samples were minimal and not harmful for infant food. Sensory evaluation result on reconstituted products revealed that sample C ((70 MG: 30 MBF) was more acceptable to the panelist in all the parameters tested, though not significant at (P < 0.05) for taste and aroma. It was observed that the isolated organism (Aspergillus niger, Apergillus flavus, Penicillum spp. and Fusarium spp) increased on weekly basis for both sealed and unsealed samples after 4 weeks of storage, average microbial load in the weaning food ranged from 3.0 x 103 – 18.0 x 103 cfu/ml. The practice of cooking the weaning food to about 95oC for 5 minutes prior to serving will significantly reduce the the microbial load. Further research on enhancing the flavor of maize/mungbean weaning food is recommended to boost acceptability.
