Betaine content in buckwheat enriched wholegrain wheat pasta

Abstract

This study was conducted to investigate the effect of the addition of buckwheat flour, as well as the influence of buckwheat grain pretreatment, on betaine content in wholegrain wheat pasta. The buckwheat is traditionally used in the human diet for centuries due to its nutritional benefits and positive effect on health such as plasma cholesterol level reduction, anticancer and anti-inflammatory activity. On the other side, betaine is a bioactive compound naturally present in cereals and pseudocereals, important for demethylation of homocysteine to methionine which mainly occurs in the liver. The single screw extruder was used for the production of wholegrain wheat pasta as a control sample and pasta in which wholegrain wheat flour was substituted with one of two types of wholegrain buckwheat flour (autoclaved wholegrain buckwheat flour and flour without treatment), with a level of substitution from 10 to 30%. High-performance liquid chromatography with evaporative light scattering detector (ELSD) was used to analyze betaine content in different pasta samples. Betaine content in wholegrain wheat pasta was 30.07 mg/100 g f.w. (i.e. 34.92 mg/100 g d.w.) and the highest content of betaine in pasta enriched with wholegrain buckwheat flour was detected in a sample with 10% flour substitution (21.63 mg/100 g, apropos 24.22 mg/100 g d.w.) compared to other levels of substitution. Following the presented results, autoclaving pretreatment of buckwheat grain prior to buckwheat flour production did not show important differences in betaine content when pasta made with this type of flour was compared with pasta made with untreated buckwheat flour. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. III46005]

Keywords

• pasta
• buckwheat flour
• betaine
• hplc
• elsd