Research progress on faba bean and faba forage in food and feed types, physiochemical, nutritional, and molecular structural characteristics with molecular spectroscopy

Abstract

This article aims to review recent research progress and update on faba bean seeds and plant in food and feed type, physiochemical, nutritional, and molecular structural characteristics with molecular spectroscopy with chemometrics (both univariate and multivariate techniques). The review focused on chemical and nutritional characterization of faba bean and faba forage and feeding strategies to improve its utilization. The molecular spectroscopic techniques for faba research and the association between molecular structure and nutrient availability and utilization in ruminant system were reviewed. The future research direction in faba research was also provided. The study provides an insight and a potential approach using molecular spectroscopy to study molecular chemistry and molecular structure and molecular nutrition interaction in faba bean seeds and plant.

Keywords:

• Physiochemical profiles
• nutritional value
• molecular structure features
• whole plant faba bean and forage
• food and feed type
• application of spectroscopy

Acknowledgements

The Ministry of Agriculture Strategic Research Chair Programs fund from the Saskatchewan Pulse Growers (SPG), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC-Individual Discovery Grant and NSERC-CRD Grant), the SaskCanola, the Saskatchewan Agriculture Strategic Research Chair Program Fund, the Agricultural Development Fund (ADF), the SaskMilk, the Saskatchewan Forage Network (SNK), the Western Grain Research Foundation (WGRF) are acknowledged.

The National Synchrotron Light Source in Brookhaven National Laboratory (NSLS-BNL, New York, USA) and Advanced Light Source in Berkeley National Laboratory (ALS-BNL) are supported by the U.S. Department of Energy. Canadian Light Source Inc. at University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, Canada) is supported by various Canadian federal and provincial funds.

The authors are grateful to Lisa Miller for synchrotron beamtime arrangement at ALS and NSLS, valuable discussion and/or collaborations, and Randy Smith (NSLS-BNL, New York) and Hans Bechtel (ALS, Berkeley) for helpful synchrotron data collection at ALS and NSLS.

Disclosure statement

The authors state that there are no conflicts of interest.