Fatma Boukid

Current Trends in Ancient Grains-Based Foodstuffs: Insights into Nutritional Aspects and Technological Applications

For centuries, ancient grains fed populations, but due to their low yield, they were abandoned and replaced by high-yielding species. However, currently, there is a renewed interest in ancient wheat and pseudocereal grains from consumers, farmers, and manufacturers. Ancient wheat such as einkorn, emmer, spelt, and Kamut®, are being reintegrated because of their low fertilizer input, high adaptability and important genetic diversity. New trends in pseudocereal products are also emerging, and they are mostly appreciated for their nutritional outcomes, particularly by the gluten-free market. Toward healthier lifestyle, ancient grains-based foodstuffs are a growing business and their industrialization is taking 2 pathways, either as a raw ingredient or a functional ingredient. This paper deals with these grain characteristics by focusing on the compositional profile and the technological potential.

Understanding the Effects of Genotype, Growing Year, and Breeding on Tunisian Durum Wheat Allergenicity. 2. The Celiac Disease Case

The aim of this study was to compare immunogenic and toxic gluten peptides related to celiac disease (CD). 100 accessions of genotypes selected during the 20th century in Tunisia were in vitro digested and then analyzed by UPLC/ESI-MS technique using an isotopically labeled internal standard. The first MANOVA confirmed a high variability in the content of immunogenic and toxic peptides reflecting high genetic diversity in the germplasm released during the past century in Tunisia, consistently with PCA and clustering analysis results. Our finding showed also important variability in CD epitopes due to growing seasons climate scenarios. Moreover, the second MANOVA revealed significant differences between abandoned and modern cultivars CD-related peptide amounts. Although we could not conclude that there was an augment of allergens in newly selected durum wheat lines compared to abandoned ones, we demonstrated that modern genotype peptides were less sensitive to climate variation, which is a useful indicator for wheat breeders.

Effectiveness of Germination on Protein Hydrolysis as a Way to Reduce Adverse Reactions to Wheat

In this work, the aim is to study the effectiveness of germination on wheat protein degradation, with a specific focus on proteins involved in adverse reactions to wheat. The effects of 8 days of germination at 25 °C on the chemical composition and the protein profile were determined. Germination did not have a significant effect on starch, protein, lipid, and ash contents. General protein profile, as indicated by SDS-PAGE analysis, revealed that germination induced a relevant degradation in protein fraction. After in vitro gastrointestinal digestion, gluten peptides involved in celiac disease (CD) were identified and quantified using UPLC/ESI-MS technique. Also, CM3 protein, involved in bakers asthma and intestinal inflammation, was quantified by measuring a marker peptide. Statistical analysis underlined that germination and genotype had significant impact on the amount of both components. Regarding gluten peptides related to CD, germination enabled an average reduction of 47% in peptides eliciting adaptive immune response and 46% in peptides eliciting innate immune response. CM3 protein showed also a high average reduction (56%). Thus, this study suggests that germination might be a good bioalternative to provide a low impact raw ingredient for special wheat-based foodstuffs.

An overview of the Italian market for 2015: cooking quality and nutritional value of gluten-free pasta

A roundup of gluten-free (GF) pasta sold in the Italian market in 2015 was characterised throughout cooking behaviour, texture, colour and nutritional value. A preliminary evaluation of cooking quality of the thirty-three available products underlined an extremely heterogeneous technological quality. Eleven categories were, therefore, discriminated based on the main ingredients declared on the labels. Interestingly, the most numerous category (rice and corn) was pulverised on the factorial space indicating highly heterogeneous properties. This result was confirmed throughout multivariate statistics and can be likely due to diversity in ingredients proportions or/and processing. Nutritional evaluation of GF pasta pointed out a good nutritional quality. Therefore, the combination of technological and nutritional analyses demonstrated a huge difference among the analysed pasta samples, which can increase the difficulty of consumers to make their choice, and leaves room for further improvement of GF pasta formulation and productive processing.

Tracking celiac disease-triggering peptides and whole wheat flour quality as function of germination kinetics

Germination is already a well-accepted process by consumers with many products made from sprouted seeds or containing limited amounts of flour form sprouted grains. The present work aimed assessing the usefulness of germination in reducing gluten peptides associated with celiac disease, at the same time evaluating some technological features of the obtained germinated wheat. In the first part of the work, celiac disease (CD)-triggering peptides were tracked as a function of germination kinetics (from day 1 to day 6). Using simulated gastrointestinal digestion and liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry, ten celiac disease triggering peptides were identified: seven peptides presumably involved in the adaptive immune response (TI) and three peptides mainly involved in the innate immune response (TT). All the identified peptides belonged to gliadins. TI track pattern showed three phases: the first two days displayed a significant degradation, a stability phase was observed from day 3 to day 5, and finally a drastic reduction occurred on the 6th day. For TT peptides, important degradation was exclusively observed at the 6th day. In the second part, some techno-functional features of germinated whole wheat flour were assessed to estimate its potential as an alternative to conventional flour. Functionality comparison of the non-germinated versus germinated flours revealed that germination significantly influenced solvents retention capacities as well as swelling and solubility. Thus, with a reduced amount of celiac disease triggering peptides, but also with different technological behavior compared to traditional wheat flour.

Geographical origin discrimination of Pistachio (Pistacia vera L.) through combined analysis of physical and chemical features

A physicochemical assessment was carried out to discriminate the geographical origin of pistachio (Pistacia vera L.) following the regulation relative to the protection of geographical indications and designations of origin for agricultural products and foodstuffs (Article 4, paragraph 2 of Regulation (EC) No. 510/2006). One-way ANOVA results revealed that all the physical features were significantly (pu2009≤u20090.05) affected by the geographical origin, while chlorophyll a/chlorophyll b and two fatty acids [heptadecenoic acid (C17:1) and behenic (C22)] did not show significant (pu2009>u20090.05) differences among the different geographical origins. However, the remaining fatty acids showed significant (pu2009≤u20090.05) differences between pistachios coming from different countries (Iran, USA, Turkey, Syria, Kyrgyzstan and Italy) as well as between pistachios coming from two Italian locations (Bronte and Agrigento). Principal component analysis enabled to highlight differences among pistachios from different countries, and partial least squares enabled a better discrimination among pistachios from well-defined geographic areas, such as Bronte pistachios. Therefore, combining physicochemical features can be a valid tool for geographical origin discrimination of pistachio.

Understanding the Effects of Genotype, Growing Year and Breeding on Tunisian Durum Wheat Allergenicity (Part 1): The Baker’s asthma case

Bakers asthma is a serious airway disease triggered by wheat protein CM3 α-amylase/trypsin inhibitor. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the impact of genotype and crop year on allergen CM3 α-amylase/trypsin inhibitor associated with bakers asthma. A historical series of Tunisian durum wheat (100 accessions), derived from three crop years, was used to compare the amount of CM3 from landraces to advanced cultivars. CM3 protein quantification was assessed after an enzymatic cleavage of the soluble protein extracts on a UPLC/ESI-MS system, using a marker peptide for its quantification. Combined data analysis of variance revealed an important effect of genotype, crop year, and their interaction. The CM3 allergenic proteins were found to significantly vary among studied genotypes, as confirmed by genetic variability, coefficient of variance, heritability, and genetic advance.