RESUMEN
Functional foods are natural products of plants that have health benefits beyond necessary nutrition. Functional foods are abundant in fruits, vegetables, spices, beverages and some are found in cereals, millets, pulses and oilseeds. Efforts to identify functional foods in our diet and their beneficial aspects are limited to few crops. Advances in sequencing and availability of different omics technologies have given opportunity to utilize these tools to enhance the functional components of the foods, thus ensuring the nutritional security. Integrated omics approaches including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics coupled with artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches can be used to improve the crops. This review provides insights into omics studies that are carried out to find the active components and crop improvement by enhancing the functional compounds in different plants including cereals, millets, pulses, oilseeds, fruits, vegetables, spices, beverages and medicinal plants. There is a need to characterize functional foods that are being used in traditional medicines, as well as utilization of this knowledge to improve the staple foods in order to tackle malnutrition and hunger more effectively.
RESUMEN
A total of 60 genotypes of peanut comprising 46 genotypes selected from ICRISAT mini core collection and 14 elite cultivars with differing kernel color and size were used to profile the nutritional parameters such as proximates (moisture, fat, ash, crude protein, crude fiber, carbohydrate content) and nutraceuticals (total polyphenol content and total antioxidant activity). The genotypes showed varied kernel color ranging from white to purple. Kernel skin color was quantified using colorimetry, and the color parameters were expressed as CIELAB color parameters. In total, nine morphological traits, six yield related traits, eight nutritional traits and eleven color parameters were observed across 60 genotypes. The sixty genotypes were grouped into ten clusters based on the color strength. Among them, Cluster-III with dark red seeds had the maximum fat content and total polyphenol content (TPC). Cluster-VI with light pink colored seeds had high antioxidant activity (AOA) and Cluster-X with white colored seeds had highest moisture and crude protein content. Color strength (K/S) was found to be positively correlated with TPC. Another color parameter, redness/greenness (a*) was found to be positively correlated with AOA. However, seed size was positively correlated with the crude protein content, but not with any other nutritional traits under study. The population studies based on the genotypic data indicated two distinct groups pertaining to botanical types of peanut. The marker-trait association (MTA) using single marker analysis indicated 75 major MTAs for most of the nutritional traits except for moisture content. The markers associated with nutritional parameters and other important yield related traits can further be utilized for genomics-assisted breeding for nutrient-rich peanuts.
RESUMEN
The study was undertaken to assess nutrient composition, glycemic index and health benefits of barnyard millet in type II diabetics. The millet had 10.5% protein 3.6% fat, 68.8% carbohydrate and 398 kcal/100 g energy. The total dietary fibre content was high (12.6%) including soluble (4.2%) and insoluble (8.4%) fractions. Low glycemic index of the grains both dehulled (50.0) and dehulled and heat treated (41.7) was recorded. The feeding intervention of 28 days revealed a significant reduction in glucose (139.2 to 131.1 mg/dl), LDL-C (from 167.7 to 162.9 mg/dl), VLDL-C (from 24.0 to 23.2 mg/dl), ratio of TC: HDL (from 4.7 to 4.6) and LDL: HDL (from 3.2 to 3.1) in the experimental diabetic groups. Similar, but marginal changes were observed in experimental non diabetics. Marginal decrease of triglycerides and increase of HDL were registered in diabetic groups due to barnyard millet intervention. The study indicated that the dehulled and heat treated barnyard millet is beneficial for type-II diabetics.
