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Teff is the only cultivated cereal crop from the genus Eragrostis and it is the major staple food of Ethiopians. In Ethiopia, the quality of teff and its market price are primarily determined by its grain color. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of soil physicochemical characteristics across multiple locations in the two main teff growing regions of Amhara and Oromia states in Ethiopia on teff grain color and nutritional quality of a single variety. Grain and soil samples were collected from 24 field sites cultivated with the popular teff variety ‘Quncho’ (DZ-Cr-387/RIL-355). The teff grain samples collected from the 24 locations were evaluated for grain color, proximate composition, amino acid composition, and grain mineral concentration and the soil samples were analyzed for their physicochemical properties. Sample location means were considered different p < 0.05. Teff grain color indices of hue (H), saturation (S), and brightness (V), grain proximate composition, amino acid composition, and mineral concentration differed among locations (p < 0.05). There were significant negative correlations between grain S color value and soil pH, SOC, Ca, Mg, S, and Na. Soils with greater pH, SOC, Ca, Mg, and S generally had lower S values and thus, whiter color teff grains. There were considerable variations in the measured parameters for soil and teff grain physicochemical properties. The results indicated an opportunity for management interventions necessary to obtain uniformity in grain color and chemical composition for the same variety of teff grown in the two major regions in Ethiopia.

Grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) is a gluten-free cereal grown around the world and is a food staple in semi-arid and subtropical regions. Sorghum is a diverse crop with a range of pericarp colour including white, various shades of red, and black, all of which show health-promoting properties as they are rich sources of antioxidants such as polyphenols, carotenoids, as well as micro- and macro-nutrients. This work examined the grain composition of three sorghum varieties possessing a range of pericarp colours (white, red, and black) grown in the Mediterranean region. To determine the nutritional quality independent of the contributions of phenolics, mineral and fatty acid content and composition were measured. Minor differences in both protein and carbohydrate were observed among varieties, and a higher fibre content was found in both the red and black varieties. A higher amount of total saturated fats was found in the white variety, while the black variety had a lower amount of total unsaturated and polyunsaturated fats than either the white or red varieties. Oleic, linoleic, and palmitic were the primary fatty acids in all three analysed sorghum varieties. Significant differences in mineral content were found among the samples with a greater amount of Mg, K, Al, Mn, Fe, Ni, Zn, Pb and U in both red and black than the white sorghum variety. The results show that sorghum whole grain flour made from grain with varying pericarp colours contains unique nutritional properties.

The current study assessed the effectiveness of five conventional and three hermetic storage facilities for extended storage of wheat grains under ambient storage conditions during two storage seasons (2023 and 2024). The findings indicated that hermetic storage facilities outperformed conventional ones throughout the six-month storage period. For instance, GrainPro PHB exhibited the minimal increase in grain moisture contents (0.50 and 0.33%), resulting in the least grain damage (2.38 and 2.44%) and weight loss (0.93 and 0.93%) during both years, respectively. Additionally, GrainPro PHB recorded the highest seed germination (90.50 and 90.33%) for both years. Compared to conventional storage methods, GrainPro PHB exhibited a lower number of storage insects. The proximate composition analysis revealed significant nutritional differences between polypropylene bags and GrainPro PHB. GrainPro PHB successfully maintained proximate composition, with minimal decreases in protein (1.03 and 0.71%), fat (16.88 and 14.95%), and starch content (0.8 and 0.5%) and minimal increases in ash (25.00 and 23.33%) and fiber contents (18.33 and 16.80%) in both years. Moreover, results revealed a positive correlation between grain moisture contents and damage parameters, suggesting that the higher moisture contents may aggravate the percent grain damage and weight loss. There were also better rheological properties in flour made from grains stored in GrainPro PHB, like a lower minimum water absorption capacity (WAC), a longer dough development time (DDT), and a maximum dough stability time (DST). Furthermore, texture profile analysis (TPA) of bread made from flour of grains stored in GrainPro PHB showed improved texture, with higher chewiness, cohesiveness, springiness, and resilience, and lower hardness, resulting in superior overall quality compared to bread made from conventionally stored grains. Eventually, these findings underscore the effectiveness of hermetic storage facilities in maintaining grain moisture contents, reducing losses, preserving seed quality, and enhancing food and nutrition security.

The cereal grains such as wheat, barley, sorghum, millets were evaluated before and after germination (24 h, 48 h and 72 h) and compared for their proximate composition, antioxidant activity, total phenolic content, total flavonoid content, pasting properties, in vitro starch digestibility and FTIR spectroscopy. Germination inversely affected the protein, fat, and ash content of different cereal grains. The germinated flours have less water content and higher oil absorption capacities along with reduced starch content. The contents of rapidly digestible starch (RDS), slowly digestible starch (SDS) and resistant starch (RS) in the ungerminated cereal flours ranged from 20.7 to 32.1%, 26.9 to 38.0% and 6.2 to 17.6% respectively but after germination of 72 h, the RDS content increased from 26.5 to 36.2% while SDS and RS content decreased from 26.1% (sorghum) to 16% (barley) and 14.7% (barley) to 4.6% (wheat) respectively. The drought–tolerant crops (sorghum, millets and barley) are potential sources of antioxidants and phenolic content and yielded lower hydrolysis index and estimated glycaemic index upon germination. The highest section of antiparallal β-sheet, α-helix and β-turns were found in wheat flour followed by sorghum flour and their proportion decreased with continuous germination. The continuous reduction of viscosity was evaluated with the progress in germination. Overall, germination is a way to get health-promoting compounds from less utilizing cereal such as millets, sorghum and barley and enhance their uses to nourish the huge population with the aim to fulfill their nutritional requirements.

Main conclusionThe study provides nutritional profiling of unexploited little millets from Eastern Ghats, which has ample opportunities for future breeding programs for enhancing the food quality and holds great potential in food industry.Little millet is an important small millet native to the Indian subcontinent and their nutritional value has been underutilized compared to other cereals. It’s nutritional and nutraceutical profiling is essential to integrate the plants in developmental interventions. The present study evaluated comprehensive nutritional, nutraceutical and physico-functional properties of 14 selected little millet genotypes originated from Eastern Ghats of India and compared them with an improved variety (OLM 208) of the locality. The proximate compositions (per 100 g) showed significant variations, with moisture content ranging from 4.13 to 8.48 g, ash from 1.90 to 5.15 g, fat from 2.35 to 5.74 g, protein from 10.46 to 13.83 g, carbohydrate from 70.92 to 77.89 g, fiber from 2.03 to 7.82 g and energy from 372.8 to 391.1 kcal. These little millet flours are rich in phenol 5.37–12.73 mg/g, flavonoid 1.06–8.25 µg/g, vitamin C 12.72–22.86 µg/g, antioxidants 7.22–23.17%, iron 20.38 to 61.60 mg/ kg and zinc 17.47 to 37.59 mg/ kg. The first two components of principal component analysis captures 73.0% of the total variation, which reflected huge variability among the investigated genotypes. Maximum heritability and genetic advance were recorded in flavonoid, fiber, iron, zinc, phenol and vitamin C across the populations. Taken together, some indigenous little millet genotypes such as Mami, Kalia and Bada, were exceptionally rich in fiber, protein, energy, flavonoid, vitamin C and antioxidants and are nutritionally superior compared to other varieties from the locality. These nutrition rich little millet genotypes have ample opportunities for future breeding programs to enhance the cereal quality and holds great potential in food industry for making high value functional foods.

Nowadays, the pandemic situation has encouraged the idea of sustainable healthy foods leading to new trends in food consumption. Brewers spent grain (BSG) represents a potential functional food rich in fiber, protein, lipids, mineral and phenols that needs to be further exploited. In this vein, five different BSG types were collected from local breweries and valorized in cookies manufacturing. Thus, proximate composition (protein, minerals, lipids, ash, crude fiber and carbohydrates) was analyzed using AACC (American Association of Cereal Chemists) methods, DPPH (2,2-Diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl), and Folin Ciocalteu methods were used to determined antioxidant activity and total phenols, while minerals and aroma volatile compounds were performed using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) and ITEX/GC-MS (in tube extraction gas chromatography-mass spectrometry) respectively. Color and physical characteristics, together with sensorial analysis, were also evaluated. The results highlighted a significant difference between BSG samples, mainly from the total phenols, antioxidant activity and aroma volatile compounds point of view. BSG volatiles compounds from the aldehydes group such as 2-methyl-propanal, 3-methyl-butanal and 2-methyl-butanal were identified also in the final baked goods, leading to a pleasant and appreciated consumers’ taste and aroma. Furthermore, cookies sensorial analysis emphasized that the sample manufactured with BSG from light and dark malt mixture was more appreciated by consumers, attaining the highest hedonic scores.

Aquaculture feeds with optimum digestible starch levels can provide benefits but only through the continued identification and characterization of the available nutrient content of novel or lesser utilized starch sources for a larger variety of aquatic species. To address this literature gap, in vivo digestibility trials were conducted in rainbow trout and hybrid striped bass to determine the available nutrient content of commercially sourced U.S. grain sorghum hybrids. Based on digestibility data, a regression design was employed to test the replacement of wheat flour with U.S. grain sorghum in practical‐type diets for rainbow trout and hybrid striped bass at four inclusion levels (0%, 5%, 10%, and 20%). All diets were formulated to contain 40% digestible protein and 18% crude lipid, and balanced to available lysine, methionine, threonine, and phosphorus to targets of 3.82, 1.30, 2.14, and 0.6, respectively, prior to cooking extrusion. For the growth trials, 10 rainbow trout (59.1 ± 0.07 g, initial weight) or 10 hybrid striped bass (27.1 ± 0.1 g) were randomly stocked into triplicate replicate tanks per diet (300 or 500 L, respectively) and fed for eight or nine weeks, respectively to assess effects on growth performance. No significant negative effects of U.S. grain sorghum inclusion on hybrid striped bass final fish weight, growth rate expressed as a percent increase, feed conversion ratio, feed intake, body condition indices, or whole‐body proximate composition were observed. The effects of 20% red grain sorghum inclusion on rainbow trout final fish weight were explained by the linear model: Final fish weighg=248−1.0Sorghum inclusion level$$ \\mathrm{Final}\\ \\mathrm{fish}\\ \\mathrm{weigh}\\ \\left(\\mathrm{g}\\right)=248-1.0\\ \\left(\\mathrm{Sorghum}\\ \\mathrm{inclusion}\\ \\mathrm{level}\\right) $$. The reduced growth observed in rainbow trout at the 20% inclusion level underscores the need for additional research to examine the potential beneficial effects of further sorghum processing and optimize feed extrusion parameters when U.S. grain sorghum is used in place of wheat flour.

This study was conducted to investigate valid information's of the Landrace Ethiopia purple wheat and to focus on the future development of the food product with an excellent health benefits. The purple wheat grain was cleaned of foreign materials and impurities with manually by human hand. The samples were ground into flour and sieved through 75 μm sieve and were packaged in airtight plastic bags prior to analyses. The flours were analyzed for their proximate composition and bioactive compounds, the results showed that the purple wheat contained ash (5.5%), crude protein (8.5%), crude fat (3.03%), crude fiber (7.3%), moisture content (10.76%), utilized carbohydrate (64.85%) and dry gluten (0.283 g). It also contained condensed tannin, total phenol and anthocyanin content (25.6 mg/100 g, 253 mg/100 g and 197.4 mg/100 g) of anti-nutritional factors, respectively. Colored-grain wheat is one kind of new germplasm resource of cereal crops, some of which are rich in beneficial anthocyanin.

This study was carried out to evaluate some legume seeds growing in Nepal for their proximate composition, quantification of total phenolic (TPC) and flavonoid (TFC) contents, and in vitro, antioxidant and antidiabetic activities. These included legume grains such as chickpeas (Cicer arietinum), pea (Pisum sativum), mung bean (Vigna mungo), lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus), broad bean (Vicia faba), lentil (Lens culinaris), soybean (Glycine max), and common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). The legume seeds were ground to make the flour which was extracted with methanol. The phenolic and flavonoid content was estimated by Folin-Ciocalteu’s phenol and aluminum chloride colorimetric methods. The in vitro antioxidant and antidiabetic activity was evaluated by using DPPH (1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl) free radical scavenging and α-amylase enzyme inhibition assay. The different legumes showed considerable variations in their phenolic contents (30.64±1.50 mg·GAE/g to 46.65±1.25 mg·GAE/g legume seeds). Similarly, the total flavonoid contents showed 135.5±10.88 mg·QE/g to 191.7±8.73 mg·QE/g legume seeds. The in vitro antioxidant activity was evaluated in IC50 which ranged from 31.60±0.06 μg/mL to 69.74±0.89 μg/mL. The α-amylase inhibition was evaluated in IC50 which ranged from 217.38 μg/mL to 425.75 μg/mL as compared to the standard acarbose of 52.76 μg/mL. This study suggested that legumes are good sources of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats mainly for vegetarian people. The selection of the right legume species could be a good source of natural antioxidants and antidiabetics for nutraceutical uses and the beneficial effects of legumes from human health perspectives. Legume seeds growing in Nepal could be used as a sustainable and cheap meat alternative and are considered the most important food source.

A study was conducted to investigate the effect of replacing maize grain with tannia corm meal (TCM) on carcass characteristics and meat proximate composition. A total of 180-day-old Ross 308 broiler chicks were randomly divided into 15 pens, each with 12 chicks, and assigned to five dietary treatments with 3 replications. The five treatments were a replacement of maize grain with TCM at 0 (T 1 ), 15 (T 2 ), 30 (T 3 ), 45 (T 4 ) and 60% (T 5 ) levels. Slaughter, carcass, breast, thighs, drumsticks, wings, gizzard and skin weights among the treatments were significant (p < 0.05). The proximate composition of ether extract (EE) both in breast and thigh muscles was lower in birds fed 45 and 60% levels of TCM. The crude protein (CP) level of breast muscle and the ash content of thigh muscle were significantly (p < 0.05) different. On the other hand, moisture content in breast and thigh muscles, CP from thigh muscle and ash from breast muscle were comparable for all the treatment diets. In conclusion, based on the chemical composition of the meat noted in this study, TCM in broiler diets could substitute maize grain up to 60%. However, using TCM beyond 45% would affect most broiler carcass characteristics.