Structural and functional aspects of cereal arabinoxylans and β-glucans

Abstract

Publisher Summary Cereal grains, like many other foods of plant origin, contain numerous constituents with a varying degree of structural and functional complexity. Proteins and starches, being the major components in cereals, have been extensively studied to characterize their molecular structures and improve our understanding about structure–function relationships. As a result, the functional role of these biopolymers in cereal-based products has been irrefutably demonstrated. Moreover, some minor grain components, especially the non-starch polysaccharides, which constitute the structural polymers of cell walls in plant tissues, have begun to attract scientific attention as evidenced by the growing number of investigations undertaken in the recent past. This upsurge of interest in cereal cell-wall polysaccharides stems from the realization that these minor components play various roles in the human diet and substantially affect the physicochemical properties, the processing behavior, and the stability shelf life of cereal-based foods in storage. Among the several non-starch polysaccharides that build the cell walls of cereal grains, β-glucans and arabinoxylans have attracted the most attention. Advances in the elucidation of the fine structure of non-starch cereal polysaccharides have been possible via developments of appropriate analytical methods.