Varieties Of Cereal Grains Research Articles

English

Different varieties of cereal grains differ in their nutritional composition and product making characteristics. Barley is an underutilized and neglected food crop in Pakistan. Mainly barley is used as source of carbohydrates but is also an imperative source of minerals specially potassium, calcium and phosphorus. Although, the importance of these minor constituents as minerals is of significant importance for human nutrition, the micronutrients of different Pakistani barley varieties have not been studied up till now. The aim of this study was to characterize the mineral profile of Pakistani grown barley varieties from different geographical regions. Ash content in different barley varieties ranged between 1.32-2.00%. Potassium (409-585 mg/100g) and phosphorus (307-446 mg/100g) were found to be highest minerals in all varieties while selenium (0.04-0.30 mg/kg) and cobalt (3.1-24.2 µg/kg) were found in trace amount. Overall, the varieties grown in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa (KPK) province were found to be potentially good source of minerals especially iron and calcium. However, the varieties grown in Sindh province were found to be poor sources of minerals excluding sodium. Three statistically significant clusters were identified using chemometric tools. Barley variety Rakhshan-10 showed highest ash content and overall presented better mineral profile. Significant differences in mineral content were found in all barley varieties grown in different locations. Overall, findings of this study will help the food industries in selection of barley variety/ies with high mineral profile to be incorporated in barley-based food products.

IoT System for Gluten Prediction in Flour Samples Using NIRS Technology, Deep and Machine Learning Techniques

Gluten is a natural complex protein present in a variety of cereal grains, including species of wheat, barley, rye, triticale, and oat cultivars. When someone suffering from celiac disease ingests it, the immune system starts attacking its own tissues. Prevalence studies suggest that approximately 1% of the population may have gluten-related disorders during their lifetime, thus, the scientific community has tried to study different methods to detect this protein. There are multiple commercial quantitative methods for gluten detection, such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs), polymerase chain reactions, and advanced proteomic methods. ELISA-based methods are the most widely used; but despite being reliable, they also have certain constraints, such as the long periods they take to detect the protein. This study focuses on developing a novel, rapid, and budget-friendly IoT system using Near-infrared spectroscopy technology, Deep and Machine Learning algorithms to predict the presence or absence of gluten in flour samples. 12,053 samples were collected from 3 different types of flour (rye, corn, and oats) using an IoT prototype portable solution composed of a Raspberry Pi 4 and the DLPNIRNANOEVM infrared sensor. The proposed solution can collect, store, and predict new samples and is connected by using a real-time serverless architecture designed in the Amazon Web services. The results showed that the XGBoost classifier reached an Accuracy of 94.52% and an F2-score of 92.87%, whereas the Deep Neural network had an Accuracy of 91.77% and an F2-score of 96.06%. The findings also showed that it is possible to achieve high-performance results by only using the 1452–1583 nm wavelength range. The IoT prototype portable solution presented in this study not only provides a valuable contribution to the state of the art in the use of the NIRS + Artificial Intelligence in the food industry, but it also represents a first step towards the development of technologies that can improve the quality of life of people with food intolerances.

A rapid and sensitive lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA) for the detection of gluten in foods

The gluten protein found in a variety of cereal grains is a food allergen that can elicit a spectrum of immuno-inflammatory responses in people. Consumer awareness has prompted changes in food labeling requirements, expanded gluten-free food product availability and increased demand for effective gluten testing methodologies. To meet the challenges associated with gluten testing from diverse and complex foods we developed a lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA) using a pair of novel gliadin monoclonal antibodies (MAbs). Using a visual gold reporter, we show sensitive gluten detection (150 ng/mL) from complex food substrates using a fast (<5 min) and easy testing methodology. In this report we characterize the binding properties of a cohort of newly generated gliadin monoclonal antibodies suitable for gluten detection using multiple assay formats and introduce a novel plug-n-play test strip platform with integrated test components in a single-use format.

Effects of explosive puffing process on the reduction of ochratoxin A in rice and oats

Ochratoxin A (OTA) represents one of the most widespread mycotoxins in agricultural commodities in the world and is considered as a possible human carcinogen with its potent nephrotoxicity. Since OTA is stable under most food processing conditions, it has been detected in a variety of cereal grains and their processed products. We investigated the effect of explosive puffing process on the reduction of OTA in rice and oats. Moisture content of rice and oat grains were adjusted to 15% (wet weight basis, wb) and OTA was spiked at 100 μg/kg. Then the grains were processed by explosive puffing at 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9 MPa. The moisture content of puffed rice and oat snacks were in the ranges of 5–8% wb and 6–10% wb, respectively, and the moisture content in the puffed products were decreased with increasing pressure. In addition, decreased bulk density and increased degree of redness (a) were observed with increased explosive puffing pressure. The reduction of OTA concentration in puffed rice and oats were decreased with increasing explosive puffing pressures in the ranges of 15–28% and 38–52%, respectively. These results suggest that OTA in rice and oat may be reduced significantly by explosive puffing process, which can be applied to commercial production of cereal-based snack foods.

Effect of cereal type and Xylanase supplementation on nutrient retention and growth performance of broilers

An experiment was conducted to study the effect of cereal (corn, wheat, barley and sorghum) and supplemental enzyme (a mono-component xylanase) in a 4 × 2 factorial arrangement. A 2-phase feeding program (0 to 21 and 21 to 42 d) was used and 4 iso-caloric, iso-nitrogenous diets were formulated containing corn, wheat, barley, or sorghum as the sole cereal. Diets based on each cereal were fed without or with supplemental xylanase (16,000 BXU/kg) to 8 replicate pens of 10 chicks (5 male : 5 female, Cobb 500) each. Growth performance was recorded at 21 or 42 d posthatch. Excreta was quantitatively collected from 18 to 21 and 38 to 41 d for the measurement of the total tract retention of dry matter (DM), nitrogen (N) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) and apparent metabolizable energy (AME). Ileal digestible energy (IDE) was measured at the end of the study (42 d posthatch) using titanium dioxide as an indigestible marker. For the overall 42 d period, birds fed barley-based diets had lower feed intake (P < 0.05), lower body weight (P < 0.05) and converted feed into gain less efficiently (P < 0.05) compared with the diets based on corn, wheat or sorghum. Xylanase supplementation improved weight gain in diets based on corn, wheat, and sorghum with the exception of barley-based diets (cereal × xylanase interaction, P < 0.05). Xylanase improved the overall feed conversion ratio (1.885 vs. 1.939; P < 0.05) with the effect being independent of the cereal type. The N retention of barley-based diets was lower (P < 0.05) compared with the other cereals, while xylanase improved N retention (P < 0.05) regardless of the cereal type. NDF digestibility differed (P < 0.05) across cereal (barley > wheat > corn > sorghum) and was improved (P < 0.05) by xylanase supplementation. A significant cereal × xylanase interaction (P < 0.05) was observed for energy measurements, where xylanase improved IDE of the corn-based diet, and AME of corn- and wheat-based diets. Results of the current study demonstrate potential of xylanase in improving nutrient retention and growth performance of broilers fed diets based on variety of cereal grains.

Empowering rural women through small scale food processing unit- An approach

Agriculture being an important occupation in India, there is huge wastage of perishable agricultural commodities. Despite India being the largest producer of the largest varieties of cereal grains and pulses, the demand for consumption is just growing owing to a large increase in population. Processing of cereal grains and pulses has a bright future ahead. The processing of the food commodities at the village level will not only check the post harvest losses but also provides additional employment (both direct and indirect) to the local people. Bidar district is considered as pulse bowl of Karnataka where in pulses like blackgram, greengram, redgram and bengalgram are major crops comprising 206717 ha area. Hence the main objective of this study was to strengthen the livelihood security by establishing 24 small scale food processing units under NAIP-3 Bidar. The research on small scale food processing unit was conducted by team of NAIP-3, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Bidar, under an ICAR sponsored project on “Livelihood Security through Resource and Entrepreneurship Management in Bidar district”, for 240 selected participants by forming 24 Community Based Organizations consisting of 10 members in each group and introduced mini dal mill, vermicelli machine, chilli pounding machine, flour mill and weighing balance. The project area included 24 selected villages of 4 clusters viz , Aurad, Bhalki, Basavakalyan and Humnabad in Bidar district of Karnataka state. The average income of food processing group was 32,640/month/group/ during season by generating an employment opportunity of 190 man days for 240 members. Thus helping women to empower themselves through group approach.

Ochratoxin A in Stored U.S. Barley and Wheat

Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a mycotoxin of significant health concern that is present in a variety of cereal grains and other foods around the world. Although OTA contamination can occur prior to harvest, it is largely considered a storage issue that can be controlled through the implementation of proper storage practices. Barley, durum, and hard red spring wheat samples that had been stored for various lengths of time were collected (n = 262) over a period of 2 years by multiple commercial grain companies located in the northwestern and northern Great Plains regions of the United States. Samples were analyzed for OTA concentration using high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection. OTA was detected in 12.2% of the samples, and of those samples, 81.3% had been stored for ≥6 months. One sample of barley and four samples of wheat exceeded 5 ng/g of OTA.

Role of Machine Vision System in Food Quality and Safety Evaluation

In India the ever-increasing population, losses in handling and processing and the increased expectation of food products of high quality and safety standards, there is a need for the growth of accurate, fast and objective quality determination of these characteristics in food products continues to grow. Number of mechanized processing lines has been developed for commercial production. But the visual inspection and quality control is done by human eyes. Human inspection is a slow process, has poor repeatability and result varies from person to person. Machine vision system (MVS) is an image processing/analysis technique which is used for objective evaluation of quality parameters. Its speed and accuracy satisfy ever increasing production and quality requirements, hence aiding in the development of totally automated processes. Mass production of food was also associated with two major problems. The first one is the decline in food quality, and the second one is the “waste” problem associated with processing and preparation operations. The wastage in many cases is a direct consequence of the quality problem, where the quality decline reaches unaccepted limits. Hence, is the need for quality inspection and assurance mechanisms to be installed in the production lines of such mass food processing and producing plants. MVS can perform many functions simultaneously in a food processing line such as segregation by species, by size, by visual quality attributes, determination of composition, volume, measurement of shape parameters, and quantification of the meat colour, automated portioning and detection of defects. MVS system is also being used in food industry for the detection of defects in apples, oranges, olives, cherries etc., sorting of potatoes, online monitoring of baking conditions, measurement of browning in chips. It is also being used for checking ripening stages of banana, tomato, cherries etc. Also it can be used to classify different varieties of cereal grains and check their adulteration. MVS considered as investigative tool to evaluate the functional properties and quality attributes such as shrinkage, texture and colour of cheddar and mozzarella cheese. This paper critically reviews the progress and application of MV technology in the food industry with a special emphasis on meat, poultry, seafood, and other foods. Recent developments in MVS and supporting technologies has resulted in general acceptance of the feasibility and profitability of implementing visual inspecting systems in quality assurance operations.

Fan and Tsai: Intracommunity Variation in Plant-Based Food Consumption at the Market Street Chinatown, San Jose, California

Most archaeobotanical research on Chinese immigrant communities in North America has relied on aggregate, site-wide data sets. The question of foodways variability within Chinese immigrant communities has been relatively neglected. An intrasite comparative approach is used here to investigate differences in plant-food consumption between residents of merchant households and those of tenement buildings in the Market Street Chinatown, a major urban Chinese immigrant community in San Jose, California, from 1866 to 1887. Residents of both household types consumed a nutritious diet rich in vegetables and fresh fruits; however, some merchant households consumed greater varieties of cereal grains, while residents of some working-class tenements consumed a wider range of legumes, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. These class-based differences were not consistent, however, suggesting that specific occupation, more than class position, may have influenced access to or preference for certain plant foods.

The roots of a new green revolution

A significant increase in shoot biomass and seed yield has always been the dream of plant biologists who wish to dedicate their fundamental research to the benefit of mankind; the first green revolution about half a century ago represented a crucial step towards contemporary agriculture and the development of high-yield varieties of cereal grains. Although there has been a steady rise in our food production from then onwards, the currently applied technology and the available crop plants will not be sufficient to feed the rapidly growing world population. In this opinion article, we highlight several below-ground characteristics of plants such as root architecture, nutrient uptake and nitrogen fixation as promising features enabling a very much needed new green revolution.

Phosphorus utilization and characterization of excreta from swine fed diets containing a variety of cereal grains balanced for total phosphorus1

Intrinsic phytase in swine feeds may increase phytate utilization and alter the solubility of the excreted P. The objective of this experiment was to quantify changes in fecal P composition from swine fed a variety of cereal grains containing a range of phytate concentrations and endogenous phytase activities. Twenty-five crossbred barrows (89.3 +/- 6.8 kg) were fed 1 of 5 dietary treatments that were based on wheat, corn, barley, low-phytate barley, or high-fat-low-lignin oats. Experimental diets were formulated to contain 75% of the test grain and were fed for a 7-d acclimation period followed by a 3-d fecal collection period. Total-tract apparent digestibility coefficients were determined for DM, P, and phytate using an indicator method. Fecal P was characterized using solution-state (31)P nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Water-soluble P (WSP) and WSP-to-total P (TP) ratio were determined in the feces. Apparent total-tract digestibility coefficients for P and phytate ranged from 0.33 (barley) to 0.45 (low-phytate barley) and from 0.20 (corn) to 0.79 (oats), respectively. The majority of P excreted in the feces was in the form of phosphate (>47% of TP), and phytate degradation was not related to the endogenous phytase activity in the diet. There was a positive linear relationship between dietary NDF and apparent total-tract phytate digestibility (r(2) = 0.82; P = 0.03), indicating that greater dietary fiber content may enhance microbial breakdown of phytate in the hindgut. There was a negative relationship between the fecal WSP-to-TP ratio and the percentage of TP that was in the form of phytate in the feces. In summary, our results indicate that the majority of P in the feces of pigs fed diets based on cereal grains is present in the form of phosphate and relatively small amounts of phytate were contained in the excreta. The exception to this was the corn diet, for which 45% of the total fecal P was in the form of phytate. Hydrolysis of phytate in the gut did not appear to be related to the content of either phytate or phytase in the grain, but was related to dietary fiber concentration.

Beauvericin Activates Ca2+-Activated Cl-Currents and Induces Cell Deaths inXenopusOocytes via Influx of Extracellular Ca2+

Beauvericin is a mycotoxin that infects a wide variety of cereal grains. The toxicological importance of beauvericin is implicated by its cytotoxicity in animal and human cells, which has been suggested to result from an increase in intracellular Ca(2+) concentration ([Ca(2+)](i)). Despite the fact that beauvericin may activate extracellular Ca(2+) influx, beauvericin-induced cell deaths has been suggested to be exclusively due to Ca(2+) release from internal Ca(2+) stores. We endeavored to elucidate the mechanism of beauvericin-induced [Ca(2+)](i) increase by studying the effects of beauvericin in Xenopus oocytes. By applying a -140-mV prepulse prior to a series of test pulses, we found that beauvericin induced small inward currents at -140 mV, followed by outwardly rectifying currents that displayed an apparent reversal potential close to the expected equilibrium potential of Cl(-). Both the inward and outward currents induced by beauvericin were blocked by niflumic acid, a specific blocker for Ca(2+)-activated Cl(-) currents (I(Cl,Ca)). Removal of extracellular Ca(2+), as well as perfusion of lanthanide, abrogated beauvericin-induced currents. Beauvericin also displayed prominent cytotoxic effects in Xenopus oocytes in a dose-dependent manner. In the absence of extracellular Ca(2+), cytotoxicity-induced by 10 and 30 microM, but not 50 microM, of beauvericin was significantly diminished. Our results are consistent with the idea that beauvericin induces extracellular Ca(2+) influx, which in turn activates I(Cl,Ca) and contributes to beauvericin-induced cell deaths in Xenopus oocytes.

Brain necrosis in mouse fetuses transplacentally exposed to the mycotoxin ochratoxin A

Ochratoxin A is a teratogenic and nephrotoxic mycotoxin produced by storage molds (chiefly species of Aspergillus and Penicillium) on a variety of cereal grains and other agricultural commodities. Pure crystalline ochratoxin A was dissolved in 0.1 n sodium bicarbonate solution and given to groups of 5 to 10 pregnant CD-1 mice at dose levels ranging from 3 to 5 mg/kg body weight. Dams were treated by gavage on the eighth, ninth, and tenth days of gestation or on the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth days of gestation. The dams were killed on the twentieth day of gestation and the fetal brains were fixed in formalin, processed, and examined by light microscopy. There was prominent and widespread cerebral necrosis in most fetuses from dams treated on Days 15 through 17. However, cerebral necrosis was not prominent in fetuses from dams treated on Days 8 through 10 when ochratoxin A is overtly teratogenic. These findings were also reproduced in ICR mice and in other groups of CD-1 mice treated with ochratoxin A that was dissolved in 0.1 n sodium bicarbonate and given by ip injection. Although single doses of ochratoxin A given on Day 8, 9, or 10 of gestation were teratogenic, single doses given on the fifteenth, sixteenth, or seventeenth day of gestation were insufficient to induce cerebral necrosis in the offspring.

Safe protein-calorie ratios in diets. The relative importance of protein and energy intake as causal factors in malnutrition

There has been up to now a lack of agreement as to the way in which protein and energy requirements could be combined to give estimates of adequate dietary protein-energy ratios. In particular, the relevance of the simple ratio, average protein--average energy requirement as a basis for assessing diets, has been questioned on the grounds that it fails to take account of individual variability in needs for energy, and of the extent to which these may be independent of variability in protein requirements. The main problem is to evaluate the range over which individuals can adapt either energy intake to suit expenditure, or expenditure to suit intake, without detriment to health or growth. One solution adopted by Beaton and Swiss in a recent paper is to accept the range of observed variability of energy intakes in normal populations as a measure of this. An alterative is to make use of experimental evidence for the minimum energy intake for maintenance of body energy content. These two approaches are compared, and are shown to give quantitatively similar results. The method based on minimum maintenance requirements offers the further advantage that it allows an assessment of dietary situations in relation to the likelihood of occurrence of different forms of protein--energy malnutrition; those situations in which protein deficiency is a secondary consequence of low energy intake are differentiated from those in which the primary cause is an inadequate level of protein in the diet. The adequate "safe" level of protein-energy ratio in the diets of 2- to 3-year old children is close to 5% and since most varieties of cereal grains appear to provide utilizable protein levels of close to this amount, this lends further support to the view that primary protein deficiency is unlikely to be the main factor causing protein-energy malnutrition in communities for which cereals are the cheapest source of energy.