Abstract, master thesis Karthik Vishaal Mohan

Consumption of cereal arabinoxylans is associated with number of health benefits. This Master thesis deals with the characterization of some of the high Arabinoxylan oat lines in various aspects with potential industrial value in food and nutrition. In this study, the effect of high arabinoxylan oat lines on in vitro starch digestion was tested and compared with the reference variety Belinda. One of the high AX lines was found to be interesting that showed a significant reduction in the hydrolysis index (HI) of gelatinized potato starch consistently, which can be associated with reduced glycaemic response. Another objective of the thesis was to assess the protein quality of the high AX lines by analysing the amounts of essential and non-essential amino acids present in comparison with Belinda. The same mutant line that produced reduced HI also showed a better amino acid profile than Belinda and the other mutant lines tested.  Another important aspect of the thesis was to verify that the AX content in the kernels are not degraded or reduced due to thermal processing. For this. a heat treatment study was conducted on the dehulled kernels from the high AX lines and the Belinda using the ScanOats steam oven. Post heat treatment, the kernels were milled, hydrolysed and the AX content was quantified. A considerable increase in the AX content in both Belinda and the mutated lines was observed. This thesis was performed by Karthik Vishaal Mohan, a master’s student from the department of Food Technology and Nutrition. The thesis was carried out in the department of Pure and applied Biochemistry, in collaboration between the WP2 and WP5 of ScanOats, under the supervision of Dr. Jose Alfredo Zambrano, Prof. Juscelino Tovar and Prof. Olof Olsson in association with CropTailor. It would be exciting to perform in vivo studies and clinical trials on the identified high AX line in the future for studying the glycaemic response and also the possibilities of an industrial scale-up of the heat treatment process can be discussed!