Prospects on emerging eco-friendly and innovative technologies to add value to dry bean proteins

Abstract

The world’s growing population and evolving food habits have created a need for alternative plant protein sources, with pulses playing a crucial role as healthy staple foods. Dry beans are high-protein pulses rich in essential amino acids like lysine and bioactive peptides. They have gathered attention for their nutritional quality and potential health benefits concerning metabolic syndrome. This review highlights dry bean proteins’ nutritional quality, health benefits, and limitations, focusing on recent eco-friendly emerging technologies for their obtaining and functionalization. Antinutritional factors (ANFs) in bean proteins can affect their in vitro protein digestibility (IVPD), and lectins have been identified as potential allergens. Recently, eco-friendly emerging technologies such as ultrasound, microwaves, subcritical fluids, high-hydrostatic pressure, enzyme technology, and dry fractionation methods have been explored for extracting and functionalizing dry bean proteins. These technologies have shown promise in reducing ANFs, improving IVPD, and modifying allergen epitopes. Additionally, they enhance the techno-functional properties of bean proteins, making them more soluble, emulsifying, foaming, and gel-forming, with enhanced water and oil-holding capacities. By utilizing emerging innovative technologies, protein recovery from dry beans and the development of protein isolates can meet the demand for alternative protein sources while being eco-friendly, safe, and efficient.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Dry beans are a source of lysine-rich proteins and high-quality AA for the diet.

• Physical treatments can reduce the ANFs of beans and increase protein digestibility.

• Eco-friendly technologies can treat, modify, extract, and separate bean proteins.

• Conformational changes with protein unfolding improve WHC, EA, and solubility.

• The combined use of emerging technologies allows for conveying advantages of each one.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Anti-nutritional factors
• bioactive peptides
• digestibility
• emerging technologies
• protein allergens
• pulse proteins
• techno-functional properties

Authors’ Contributions

Renata F. Teixeira: conceptualization, methodology, investigation, data curation, writing -original draft preparation, review, and editing; Clóvis A. Balbinot Filho: resources, data curation, writing - review, and editing; Débora de Oliveira: methodology, writing - review, and editing, supervision; Acácio A. F. Zielinski: methodology, writing - review, editing, supervision.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful to CAPES-PRINT, Project numbers 88887.310560/2018-00 and 88887.310373/2018-00, for financial support and scholarship.