Comparison of the nutritional value of minor- and pseudocereal crops to major crops and the barriers in their breeding for developing healthy grain.

Minor grains such as triticale, rye, oat, sorghum, quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat and acha are among the most underutilized crops worldwide. However, they are an excellent source of nutrients (protein, fiber, carbohydrates, polyunsaturated fatty acids, minerals and vitamins) and bioactive compounds (phenolic compounds and phytosterols, among others), exhibiting some nutritional and health-promoting advantages compared to major cereals. Moreover, small grains are very resilient to environmental stresses and are good alternatives to major cereals to improve nutritional security in the scenario of the current climate change. However, small cereals show some disadvantages such as lodging and seed shattering that limits their usage for food purposes. Breeding populations of minor crops are expected to retain genetic variation held in their founder populations due to their shorter history of modern breeding. Therefore, they have a huge potential to be improved through modern breeding approaches that accelerate the development of genotypes with superior agronomic and quality traits including genotyping by sequencing (GBS), mapping of quantitative trait loci (QLTs) and linkage disequilibrium (LD)-based association studies, and genomic selection. The application of such tools is, however, constrained by a number of challenges, such as the identification of genetic markers associated with quality traits and the lack of genomic data. The advance in molecular genetics will allow the development of novel genotypes in minor cereal crops. This book chapter examines the current state of the art of the nutritional minor grains compared to major cereal crops and the goals and barriers of current breeding technologies applied to improve their quality and health-related features.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Peñas, Elena, Tomé-Sánchez, Irene, Martínez-Villaluenga, Cristina
Format: capítulo de libro biblioteca
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2023
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/351601
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