Abstract
Legumes consumption has been recognized as beneficial for human health, due to their content in proteins, fiber, minerals and vitamins, and their cultivation as beneficial for sustainable agriculture due to their ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen in symbiosis with soil bacteria known as rhizobia. The inoculation with these baceria induces metabolic changes in the plant, from which the more studied to date are the increases in the nitrogen and protein contents, and has been exploited in agriculture to improve the crop yield of several legumes. Nevertheless, legumes also contain several bioactive compounds such as polysaccharides, bioactive peptides, isoflavones and other phenolic compounds, carotenoids, tocopherols and fatty acids, which makes them functional foods included into the nutraceutical products. Therefore, the study of the effect of the rhizobial inoculation in the legume bioactive compounds content is gaining interest in the last decade. Several works reported that the inoculation of different genera and species of rhizobia in several grain legumes, such as soybean, cowpea, chickpea, faba bean or peanut, produced increases in the antioxidant potential and in the content of some bioactive compounds, such as phenolics, flavonoids, organic acids, proteins and fatty acids. Therefore, the rhizobial inoculation is a good tool to enhance the yield and quality of legumes and further studies on this field will allow us to have plant probiotic bacteria that promote the plant growth of legumes improving their functionality.
Highlights
The year 2016 was declared by the United Nations as the international year of pulses recognizing their consumption as beneficial for human health and their cultivation as beneficial for the sustainability of the agriculture due to their ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen (A/RES/68/231) [1]
One of the most particular characteristics of legumes is their ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen in symbiosis with soil bacteria which are called rhizobia currently distributed in several families and genera [11]
After nodule formation, the rhizobial cells are released into the plant cells and they are transformed into bacteroids which are able to fix atmospheric nitrogen, a process involving plant and bacterial proteins, such as leghemoglobins and nitrogenases [12]
Summary
The year 2016 was declared by the United Nations as the international year of pulses (grain legumes) recognizing their consumption as beneficial for human health and their cultivation as beneficial for the sustainability of the agriculture due to their ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen (A/RES/68/231) [1]. In the last decades the increase of other plant components such as phosporous has been studied after the inoculation of phosphate solubilizing rhizobia [14] and currently the increase of potassium by using K–solubilizing bacteria is starting to be analysed [15] All these works focused on the analysis of plant components involved in legume yield due to the relevance of biological nitrogen fixation and nutrient mobilization in agriculture in order to reduce chemical inputs allowing health and environment protection [16]. Some of these bioactive compounds are influenced by rhizobial inoculation and the aim of this article is to review the state-of-art of research on changes produced in bioactive compounds profiles after rhizobial inoculation of different legumes
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