Is there a relationship between the pedoclimatic conditions of cultivation, the appearance and the canning quality of green lentil seeds of the Anicia variety?

Overview & Synopsis

Lentil (Lens culinaris subsp. culinaris) is an interesting crop in the context of food transition towards more plant-based diets (Adsule, 1996; Kahraman and Kahraman, 2016), but the production and utilisation of this crop in France remain significantly low. One of the obstacles to the use of lentil in the food transition in France is that locally produced lentil seeds are often associated with defects such as breakage and overcooking, after the canning process. Our aim is to investigate the influence of pedoclimatic conditions (soil & meteorological conditions) and agricultural practices on the cooking quality of lentil seeds. For this purpose, farmers and cooperatives were recruited to take part in the study and provide thirty-three (33) batches of green lentil seeds of the Anicia variety. This collaborative effort made it possible to collect seeds from different regions of France. In addition, farmers and cooperatives provided essential information to describe a range of pedological, meteorological and management conditions. To delineate the factors influencing cooking quality appropriate methods and specific experiments were set up. They encompass: determining hydration kinetics, defining cooking time distributions using a Mattson-Cooker type apparatus (Sabadoti et al., 2020), while performing biochemical and physicochemical analyses on soaked or cooked lentil batches. These experiments were applied to assess the cooking quality of seeds from the different batches. Correlations between these data and agronomic data will allow the identification of the main determinants affecting the cooking quality of French green lentil seeds. By characterizing the impact of cooking on the composition of the lentil seeds, these results will contribute to suggest markers of technological quality for lentil processing, to identify the mechanisms of texture degradation and to propose targets for improvement in crop management. Keywords: Lens culinaris subsp. culinaris cv. Aniciapedoclimatic conditionsMattson-Cookerhydration References: 1.Adsule, R.N., 1996. Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.), in: Nwokolo, E., Smartt, J. (Eds.), Food and Feed from Legumes and Oilseeds. Springer US, Boston, MA, pp. 109–112. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0433-3_10 2.Kahraman, A., Kahraman, A., 2016. Nutritional Components and Amino Acids in Lentil Varieties. J. Elem. https://doi.org/10.5601/jelem.2016.21.1.1106 3.Sabadoti, V.D., Miano, A.C., Augusto, P.E.D., 2020. Automation of a Mattson Bean Cooker: A simple and a low‐cost approach. J. Food Process. Preserv. 44. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfpp.14769