Integrated material science, enginomic and kinetic approach to understand aging, processing and digestion of legumes -“Engaging Legumes”

This project aims to elucidate the bio-physical and bio-chemical mechanisms of legume aging during extended storage and how these effect the processing impact on molecular changes and their associated functional properties (sensorial and nutritional) of resulting legume based food products. To reach this objective, we propose a material science approach integrated with an enginomics and kinetics based approach to evaluate the existing and within this project established hypotheses on legume aging and processing. The understanding resulting from this project will be of direct use for: (i) the identification of adequate storage conditions of legumes; (ii) the development of legume based products and their processing; (iii) legume based product development with human health benefits(6-8), and (iv) legume breeding programs for obtaining new varieties adapted not only to agricultural and environmental sustainability criteria but also to product quality characteristics including digestion.

Keywords:legume aging, food processing, glass transition phenomena, food digestion, process-structure-function relations, food structure, food quality, kinetics, fingerprinting

Disciplines:Microbiology, Systems biology, Laboratory medicine, Other chemical sciences, Nutrition and dietetics, Agricultural animal production, Food sciences and (bio)technology, Biomaterials engineering, Biological system engineering, Biomechanical engineering, Other (bio)medical engineering, Environmental engineering and biotechnology, Industrial biotechnology, Other biotechnology, bio-engineering and biosystem engineering