Garden cress (Lepidium sativum) belonging to the family Cruciferae grown in India, Europe and US is an underutilized crop. The edible whole seed is known to have health promoting properties. Hence, it was assumed that these seeds can be a functional food. A preliminary work on chemical composition of seeds was carried out and the possibility of using it as nutraceutical food ingredient in dietary fiber formulation was explored. Three fractions namely whole meal (WM), endosperm and bran were analyzed for chemical composition. The yield of the endosperm and the bran fraction were 72 and 28%, respectively. The WM, endosperm and bran had 22.5, 27.7 and 12.6% protein, 27.5, 33.1 and 6% fat, 30, 13.6 and 75% dietary fibre (DF), and 1193.00, 945.15 and 1934.57 mg% potassium respectively. The major protein on SDS-PAGE was of 29.5 kDa. The most abundant amino acid was glutamic acid (19.3%) and the essential amino acid, leucine was the highest (8.21 +/- 0.01%) and methionine the lowest (0.97 +/- 0.02%). The major fatty acid was linolenic acid (30.2%) and low amount of erucic acid (3.9%) was also present. Bran having high water holding capacity and high DF, its use as source of DF was explored. The product contained 12% protein, 4% fat and 74.3% DF and exhibited desirable functional properties such as dispersibility, gelling ability, stability, formed homogenous mild alkaline suspension and was comparable to proprietary DF.

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: Oats and probiotics have long been recognized for their health benefits. The objectives of this study were (1) to study the ability of Lactobacillus plantarum (B‐28), Lactobacillus paracasei ssp. casei (B‐29) isolated from a traditional Bulgarian cereal‐based fermented beverage, and Lactobacillus acidophilus from Chr. Hansen, Milwaukee, Wis., U.S.A., to remove cholesterol from the media and to adhere to the Caco‐2 cell line, (2) to optimize the fermentation conditions to develop a beverage using these probiotics and oats with acceptable sensory and nutritional qualities, and (3) to assess the quality and shelf‐life of this beverage and survivability of probiotics in the beverage. Lactobacillus acidophilus, B‐28, and B‐29 were found to remove 70.67%± 2.35%, 20.26%± 2.63%, and 16.75%± 3.83% of cholesterol from media and the percentage of adhesion was 4.69%± 0.78%, 1.92%± 0.78%, and 8.36%± 0.78%, respectively. The blend of oat flour, sugar, inulin, and whey protein concentrate was cooked in water and fermented for 12 h at 37°C by 2 ± 106 colony‐forming units (CFU) /mL each of B‐28 and B‐29 and 2 ± 108 CFU/mL of L. acidophilus. The beverage had 0.87%± 0.03% of dietary fiber and had better sensory qualities compared with the commercially available similar product. The probiotics survived for 10 wk of storage at 4°C, except for L. acidophilus, which survived for about 4 wk. The population of B‐28 was 1.77 ± 106 to 1.29 ± 107 CFU/mL and that of B‐29 was 7.39 ± 107 to 4.49 ± 108 CFU/mL throughout the storage period. The oat‐based symbiotic beverage is a functional drink providing both probiotics and prebiotics at the same time.

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