Abstract
Sprouts and microgreens have attracted tremendous interest across multiple disciplines in recent years. Here, we critically review the most recent advances to underscore research prospects and niches, and related challenges, not yet addressed or fully pursued. In particular, we report a number of themes that merit special attention as a result of their relevance to plant science, nutrition, health, and zootechnics: (1) species not yet or inadequately investigated, such as wild plants, and fruit tree strains; (2) abiotic and biotic factors, and biostimulants, for elicitation strategies and metabolic engineering; (3) sanitization and processing technologies to obtain high-quality products; (4) digestive fate and impact of bioactive elements, antinutrients, and allergens on human nutrition; (5) experimental challenges to researching health benefits; (6) the opportunity to generate natural product libraries for drug discovery; and (7) sprouts in animal feeding to improve both animal health and the nutritional value of animal products for the human diet. The convergence of different themes involving interdisciplinary competencies advocate fascinating research pursuits, for example, the elicitation of metabolic variants to generate natural product collections for identification and selection of bioactive chemicals with a role as nutraceuticals, key constituents of functional foods, or interactive partners of specific drugs.
Highlights
In recent years, microscale vegetables have become increasingly popular for homemade food preparations and have been the subject of progressively higher interest by the ready-to-eat market and the dietary supplements industry
While this trend is true for a vast variety of young plants and their constituents [1,2,3], this review is centered on sprouted seeds and microgreens, namely, shoots with fully expanded cotyledons, including grasses [4]
Another research gap to fill is about the development of methods that can routinely be performed in household preparations, when seed disinfection is often neglected [139]
Summary
Microscale vegetables have become increasingly popular for homemade food preparations and have been the subject of progressively higher interest by the ready-to-eat market and the dietary supplements industry. While this trend is true for a vast variety of young plants and their constituents [1,2,3], this review is centered on sprouted seeds and microgreens, namely, shoots with fully expanded cotyledons, including grasses (i.e., shoots of Poaceae) [4]. Glucosinolates are commonly found in Brassicaceae sprouts, and among phytoalexins, terpenoids and phenolic compounds are widespread in sprouts of most plant species. Their high concentration in seedlings contributes to increased vigor and tolerance to any stress potentially occurring in early stages of development Table 1
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