Anthocyanins in Wheat Seed – A Mini Review

Abstract

Improving the micronutrients in food has become an important field of the Second Green Revolution. In recent years, minor bioactive compounds such as polyphenols, pigments and carotenoids, have attracted more and more interest from both researchers and food manufactures as health-promoting and disease-preventing effects in both in vitro and in vivo studies. One of plant pigments, wheat anthocyanins as plant phenolics are increasingly attractive as natural compounds positively affecting consumer´s health and condition moreover wheat is staple food source consumed usually daily. For a purple, blue, or red colour of wheat seed are responsible glycosylated cyanidins, delphinidins, malvinidins, pelargonidins, petunidins, and peonidins located in aleurone layer or pericarp, respectively. Other than white seed colour is not natural for common hexaploid wheat but this trait can be introduced from donors by aimed breeding programs. The way of wheat anthocyanins to provide positive effects for consumer´s physiology is limited due to their specific occurrence in seed parts usually removed during grain milling practice and lower stability during processing to foods.