Indigenous Soybean Cultivars of North-East India: Source of Protein and Product Development for Climate-Smart Foods

Abstract

Food and nutritional security is a major challenge that needs to be addressed quickly. Increasing population is impending threat to the adequate supply of nutrition to all. With various steps such as development in agriculture practices introducing higher yielding varieties and integrated farming approaches, some of the needs can be addressed. However additional approaches are required to handle this problem. Soy-based food in particular can prove to be a promising food system in comparison with other crops as it is nutritionally dense with high amount of protein and phytochemicals with medicinal properties. In this article, some of the nutritional properties like total protein content and physical properties, namely bulk density, true density, geometric parameters, sphericity, and external morphology of soybean seed of high yielding soy variety, will be compared with those of local soybean cultivars of North-East India (NEI). Largest sized seeds were of Ukhrul bold (7.88 mm) and smallest size was of Ukhrul small variety (4.96 mm). Sphericity was maximum for Tawang seeds (0.882) and minimum for Ukhrul small from Manipur (0.726). The 100 kernel mass ranged from a maximum of 32.05 g for Kameng seeds to a minimum of 5.78 g for Ukhrul small. Bulk density was highest for Ukhrul small from Manipur followed by Nagaland soybean seeds with a value of 0.651 g/mm3 and 0.641 g/mm3 while lowest was for Ukhrul bold from Manipur, i.e. 0.524 g/mm3. True density of seeds of Ukhrul small was maximum, i.e. 1.292 g/mm3 and minimum for Ukhrul bold from Manipur, i.e. 1.004 g/mm3. Bulk porosity was minimum for Nagaland seeds (0.384) while maximum for Ukhrul medium from Manipur (0.537). Preliminary study on total protein content by the Kjeldahl method shows a wide range of variation for all the cultivars. Protein content of soybean seeds from Nagaland were 45% which is better than that of commercial variety JS 335 (38% protein content). On the other hand, Tawang variety seeds had the lowest protein content of 23%. There lies a huge potential in exploring these local cultivars to know their nutritional aspects, digestibility, and processing for traditional usage. These soybean varieties can further be scientifically developed into a wide range of products. This depends on their nutritional and physical properties to meet the ever-increasing demand of food in general and fulfill the protein requirements of the local people. Local cultivars of soybean can be introduced as climate smart foods in several states of NEI as these are suited to weather conditions of this region. This will not only provide nutritional security and fulfill protein needs but also be friendly on an economic basis for the unprivileged sections of the society.