Amaranthus crop for food security and sustainable food systems.

Abstract

This review ascertains amaranth grains as a potent crop for food security and sustainable food systems by highlighting its agricultural advantages, health benefits and applications in the food, packaging, and brewing industry. The global population surge and rapidly transitioning climatic conditions necessitate the maximization of nutritional crop yield to mitigate malnutrition resulting from food and nutrition insecurity. The modern agricultural practices adopted to maximize the yield of the conventional staple crops are heavily contingent on the depleting natural resources and are contributing extensively to the contamination of these natural resources. Furthermore, these agricultural practices are also causing detrimental effects on the environment like rising emission of greenhouse gasses and increased water footprints. To address these challenges while ensuring sustainable nutrient-rich crop production, it is imperative to utilize underutilized crops like Amaranthus. Amaranth grains are gluten-free pseudo-cereals that are gaining much prominence owing to their abundance in vital nutrients and bio-active components, potential health benefits, resilience to adverse climatic and soil conditions, minimum agricultural input requirements, potential of generating income for small holder farmers as well as various applications across the sustainable value chain. However, due to the limited awareness of these potential benefits of the amaranth grains among the consumers, researchers, and policymakers, they have remained untapped. This review paper enunciates the nutritional composition and potential health benefits of the grains while briefly discussing their various applications in food and beverage industries and accentuating the need to explore further possibilities of valorizing amaranth grains to maximize their utilization along the value chain.