Its size is inversely proportional to the amount of nutrients it provides: carbohydrates rich in fiber; calcium, phosphorus, iron, manganese, copper; vitamins B1, B6, and C; plus eight essential amino acids concentrated in 1.7 millimeters high by 1 wide. Teff is the smallest grain in the world and, although it does not enjoy the popularity of other better-known grains, it is slowly gaining ground among the so-called superfoods, with the addition of being gluten-free, which makes it suitable for people with celiac disease. “We incorporate it into our lines of work in research and development of foods or ingredients of plant origin, from non-traditional sources and with superior nutritional characteristics, within the framework of the election of 2023 as the International Year of Millet by the General Assembly of the Nations. United, since teff is part of this group of cereals originating from Africa and Asia,” say Darío Cabezas and María Jimena Correa, CONICET specialists in the Food Functionality and Technology Research Laboratory of the National University of Quilmes (LIFTA, UNQ ) and at the Center for Research and Development in Food Cryotechnology (CIDCA, CONICET-UNLP-CICPBA), respectively.
After having developed bread products with extruded quinoa, that is, subjected to the technological process of extrusion – which consists of molding a food to modify and enhance some of its characteristics –, he and the specialist moved on to tests with sprouted grains, and This is where teff began to show its best results. “Germination is a process during which many nutrients multiply, which in turn can be used for consumption,” they point out. Starting with the activation of the seed in dormancy, as the state prior to sprouting is known, in which it prepares to generate a new plant and for this it activates many enzymes that trigger different transformations. “For example, some proteins are hydrolyzed; We could say that they cut them into small parts, and the starch is also partially degraded to generate the energy that this process needs. In this way, its digestibility is facilitated,” explains Correa, and continues: “Likewise, they reduce the content of certain antinutrients, which increases the availability of minerals and facilitates their absorption.”
Reaching the perfect germination point was the most extensive and laborious part: using an incubator purchased especially for the project, numerous instances of characterization and observation were necessary until the temperature, humidity, light cycles, among other variables, were found to yield the searched result. “The germination process can be measured in different ways: either by the length of the radicle, that is, the first bit of root that appears; or by the time elapsed. During this development, the grain changes its characteristics, and therefore the flour obtained from them will also vary,” says Daniela Igartúa, CONICET researcher at UNQ and who was in charge of this part of the research. In this case, the tinyness of the teff grain led the team to combine both parameters to record the evolution of the seed. “What we did was select the grains that were in the first two stages of growth, that is, those with the radicle barely emerged, and those that had already grown but before exceeding the size of the grain. All this, of course, analyzed under the microscope,” adds the expert.
Once a good percentage of grains was reached at this point of germination, the team obtained a flour with high nutritional value with which they began to test its incorporation into wheat bread formulations. Thus, they went so far as to replace 30 percent of this cereal, obtaining breads of very good technological quality and markedly improving the contribution of dietary fiber, which is very low in traditional bread products that contain only wheat. In addition to sprouted flour, the team also carried out tests with extruded teff flour produced by the New Product Development area of the National Institute of Industrial Technology (INTI), under the direction of Mariana Sánchez. In both cases, the results in terms of volume and quality of the breads are good; even more promising than those shown by preliminary tests. It is worth mentioning that the trials are carried out with grains voluntarily donated by one of the few companies that grows and markets teff in Argentina. “The challenge was to regulate the replacement proportions so that the volume of the bread and other properties such as flavor, aroma, texture and appearance in general are not so affected. In the future, the project includes achieving the same but in gluten-free products,” explain the researcher.
