• Lupine flour is increasingly making its presence felt among alternative flours, alongside millet, sorghum and fava beans.
The benefits we get from cereals and wheat in particular are important and recognized worldwide. But lately, alternatives to conventional flours are making the trend, penetrating the bakery market due to the improved nutritional profile, the practical opportunities for cultivation, the positive impact on the environment and the increased interest from consumers.
Lupine is a nitrogen-fixing legume that can be used in crop rotation to reduce the amount of chemical nitrogen fertilizers. Compared to animal proteins, legumes produce the least amount of CO2 per 100 grams of protein. Lupine has proven to be extremely robust in nutrient-poor soils, making its cultivation an economically viable option.
With the evolution of the growing demand for healthy and sustainably sourced food, lupine seeds have captured the attention of the food industry as a valuable potential resource. Over time, lupine has remained an important source of protein and oil, but current interest in expanding the use of lupine beans is steadily increasing.
Possibilities of use
The first step in exploring potential lupine beans is the identification of the possibilities of their use in the replacement of some currently used ingredients. This is a promising prospect in the current context, where alternatives to traditional food products are being sought with both health and environmental benefits. To achieve this goal, it is crucial to understand in depth the composition, properties and health benefits of lupine beans and products derived from them.
What makes lupine beans so attractive to the food industry is primarily their similarity to soybeans. Both lupine and soybean plants are adapted to a wide range of climatic conditions and are notable for their protein-rich grains.
The protein content of lupine beans is significant, twice that of other legumes. With a range between 28 and 48%, the protein content varies by species and variety, being influenced by growing conditions and the type of soil in which they are grown.
Health benefits
Lupine flour has three times more protein than oats, three times more dietary fiber than quinoa, plus antioxidants, potassium and iron. With its light golden color and neutral, nutty, lightly toasted taste, it is perfect for a variety of applications, including breads, pastas, biscuits, muffins and cookies.
It absorbs liquid well and gels without the addition of thickening agents. It has a fine texture, much lighter than other gluten-free flours. It pairs well with gluten-free, low-carb, consumer-targeted ingredients keto-friendly. In addition, it can be mixed with regular wheat flour to obtain baked goods enriched with protein and dietary fiber.
Specialists believe that the optimal percentage of replacing wheat flour with lupine grain flour, to achieve improvements in the characteristics of the bakery product, is 10%. The proteins contained in lupine grain flour do not have the same specific resistance as wheat gluten, which means that the addition of lupine flour in a proportion greater than 10% in the composition of the bread will negatively influence the volume of the final product. However, this disadvantage is compensated by lupine flour's remarkable ability to retain water, its longer shelf life and its more balanced amino acid content.
Lupine in the attention of researchers
However, lupine beans naturally accumulates bitter and toxic alkaloids, which consumers find unpleasant. While sweet white lupine crops are now widespread throughout the world, thanks to the so-called process "domestication", the exact identity of the genes underlying it "sweets" it had remained uncertain until recently.
But a team of researchers from Europe and Great Britain managed to identify the sweet gene in lupine for the first time. By establishing the identity of this sweet gene, researchers believe they can facilitate the breeding of lupine and allow the domestication of other legumes that contain quinolizidine alkaloids (QA) - which have the characteristic bitter taste.
The researchers observed that QA accumulates in approximately 300 other lupine species, some of which may become excellent crop candidates following their elimination.
"The use of non-GMO techniques, as exemplified here, is particularly attractive for candidate legume crops for which no transformation protocols are available and for those grown in geopolitical areas with restrictive GMO legislation." it is shown in the study published in the journal Science Advances ( The causal mutation leading to sweetness in modern white lupine cultivars )
Article written by Gabriela Dan, Editor of Arta Albă
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