Sprouted bean flour as a novel functional ingredient for the formulation of bakery products

Due to their nutritionally balanced nutritional profile legumes are widely consumed as human food. However, legumes as a staple diet is hampered by the presence of anti-nutritional components and low digestibility di/oligosaccharides. Many biotechnological approaches have been tested to overcome one or more of the aforementioned restrictions. Among them, sprouting has been used to alter the macromolecular composition of certain grains and legumes, to decrease the content in anti-nutritional elements. Among legumes, cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) is a versatile crop, and represents a good candidate for developing novel products. This study aims to investigate the impact of short time sprouting (48 and 72 hours) on the biomolecular features and the antioxidant and antinutritional factors in cowpea seeds. Short sprouting modifies the protein pattern, with an improvement in the features required for formation of a protein network. Sprouting also leads to a decrease of anti-nutritional factors and of low digestibility oligosaccharides while improving the content in phenolics with conceivable antioxidant activity. Although the maximum effect on phytate and oligosaccharides content and protein hydrolysis are observed after 48h, the highest decrease of trypsin inhibitor activity was observed after 72h. These findings suggest that sprouted cowpea flour may be a food ingredient with enhanced nutritional and technological value. A characterization of wheat bread containing 25% of 72h-sprouted cowpea flour is currently undergoing to support this assumption. This investigation is partially supported by National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3 - Call for tender No. 341 of 15/03/2022.