Rootlets, a Malting By-Product with Great Potential

Abstract

Barley rootlets are the most abundant by-product from the malting industry. Due to the inherent association of the malting industry with brewing and distilling industries, it is also considered a by-product of these industries. Barley rootlets are produced during the germination step of malting. These rootlets are a valuable source of nutrition, with protein and fibre holding a large proportion of their composition. Barley rootlets are generally pelletised and used as animal fodder; however, their usage may not be limited to this. Efforts have been made to utilise barley rootlets as food ingredients, sources of enzymes, antioxidants, raw materials in fermentations, and in biochar production. Conversion of this by-product into other/new applications would reduce waste production from their industry origin and reduce some of the impending environmental concerns associated with by-product production. The current review focuses on providing information on the formation, production, and processing of barley rootlets, while also highlighting the composition, quality, and potential applications of barley rootlets.

Circular economy in the brewing chain

“…It may contain other wastes, such as malt dust, small and broken barley grains, barley dust, acrospires, and husk fractions. As depicted by Neylon et al (2020), its range of composition is provided in Table 1. and low or nonalcoholic ones (1.3%).…”

“…The techno-scientific literature is full of proposals about the potential uses of brewery wastes (Aliyu and Bala, 2011;Cook, 2011;Huige, 2006;Jackowski et al, 2020;Karlović et al, 2020;Kusch-Brandt et al, 2019;Mussatto, 2009;Neylon et al, 2020;Rachwal et al, 2020). Despite, they are acclaimed as a panacea for most of the world's problems, their high moisture content (Table 1) makes them perishable very quickly and de facto unreusable, especially in the human food chain.…”

“…Main MBR reuses Remarks and references 1 Food formulation Neylon et al (2020) listed a series of food products, such as bread, biscuits, and sausages, enriched with different aliquots of MBRs as such (Chiş et al, 2020) or fermented with Lactobacillus plantarum sp. (Waters et al, 2013) to improve their nutritional properties.…”

“…MBRs are a source of invertase, superoxide dismutase, nucleases, phosphotransferase, phosphomonoesterase, and especially 50-phosphodiesterase (Neylon et al, 2020). In particular, the latter is used commercially to make nucleotides (Sakaguchi et al, 1963;Sakaguchi and Kuninaka, 1965) for enhancing the flavor of broths and soups (Yamaguchi, 1998).…”

Influence of Variety and Nitrogen Fertilization on the Technological Parameters of Special Malts Prepared from Naked and Hulled Oat Varieties

“…This is a typical phenomenon that occurs during the malting process, as the malts lose protein compounds during the process of soaking and germination of the grain and the drying and de-germination of the malts [2]. After the drying process, the malt from naked oats, compared with the hulled oats, during germination, loses not only the germinal roots, but also the sprouts, which contain a lot of protein compounds [49,50].…”