Profiling of Nutritional and Health-Related Compounds in Oat Varieties

Abstract

The use of oats in the human diet has decreased over the past 70 years. This is an unfortunate development from the perspective of human health because oats have a high nutritional value and contain many compounds, including β-glucan, polyphenols, vitamins, and unsaturated fatty acids that are able to maintain or may even improve consumer’s health. In addition, oats fit into a gluten-free diet of celiac disease patients because they lack the T-cell stimulating epitopes from wheat, rye, and barley. We focused on the presence of health-related compounds in oats and how their levels vary among varieties in response to the type of soil. Ten oat varieties were grown in the Netherlands in sandy and clay soil and were analyzed for the presence and concentration of healthy compounds (β-glucan, fatty acids, vitamin E, and antioxidant activity), avenin composition, total protein and starch content, and agronomical characteristics. Principal component analysis showed that genetic background influenced the levels of all analyzed components. Protein, starch, β-glucan, and antioxidants were also affected by the type of soil. The obtained results showed that this kind of analysis can be used to profile oat varieties in general and enables the selection of specific varieties with specific compound characteristics.

Oats in healthy gluten-free and regular diets: A perspective

“…In the Netherlands, fifteen ancient and modern oat varieties (including some naked varieties) were cultivated conventionally in an experimental setting on clay and sandy soil during five subsequent years in order to perform biochemical testing and further selection for their (gluten-free) bread baking potential (Londono et al, 2013(Londono et al, , 2014. In ten varieties the presence of health-related compounds were analysed in relation to soil type (Van den Broeck et al, 2016). Principal component analysis demonstrated clear effects of the genetic background on all components with significant additional soil effects on protein, starch, betaglucan fibres, and antioxidants.…”

Puccinia coronata f. sp. avenae: a threat to global oat production

“…Although oat is primarily grown as a livestock feed crop, A. sativa ranks fourth amongst the cereals after wheat, rice and corn based on human consumption. Wholegrain oat products are usually attractive to consumers because of their impact on cholesterol levels in humans and their preservative‐free properties, as well as high nutritional and fibre content (van den Broeck et al ., ; Burnette et al ., ).…”

Biological role and health benefits of antioxidant compounds in cereals

“…Only a small number of phenolic acids are found in free form (Pang et al, 2018;Adom and Liu, 2002;Liu, 2007;Yoshida et al, 2010). Bound antioxidants are linked with lignin, polysaccharides and proteins (Madhujith et al, 2006;Cai et al, 2015). The basic phenolic compounds in the main cereal crop species are ferulic, sinapic, caffeic and coumaric acids (Adom and Liu, 2002;Hosseinian and Mazza, 2009;Li et al, 2010;Gawlik-Dziki et al, 2012;Das and Singh, 2015;Zhu et al, 2015;Trehan et al, 2018).…”