Functional properties of wheat and buckwheat milling fractions

Abstract

Buckwheat possesses a great potential for upgrading the functional properties of bakery products due to its high antioxidant activity, mainly caused by rutin. Therefore, substitution of wheat flour with buckwheat flour is expected to result in increased functional properties, i.e. antioxidant capacity of the produced bakery product. Being focused on these facts, this study examined the antioxidant properties of the ethanolic extracts of wheat milling fractions (wheat flour type 400, type 500, and type 850, wholegrain wheat flour and wheat bran) and buckwheat milling fractions (wholegrain, hull, groats, light and wholegrain buckwheat flour) and their polyphenol composition. The total phenolic content, antiradical activity on DPPH·, antioxidant activity (AOA), reducing activity and chelating activity on Fe2+ were tested. Buckwheat flours exhibited significantly higher (P<0.05) antiradical activity, AOA and reducing activity than all investigated wheat milling fractions when their corresponding IC50 values were compared. Chelating activity on Fe2+ was the only assay in which wheat milling fractions demonstrated better potential than buckwheat flours. The antioxidant properties of wheat and buckwheat milling fractions could be attributed to the presence of polyphenols, i.e. ferulic acid as the predominant phenolic compound in wheat and rutin as the main flavonoid in buckwheat milling fractions.