Effect of germination on nutritional quality of soybean

Abstract

Soybean are rich in functional nutrients such as protein, Essential amino acid, Polyunsaturated fatty acid, minerals, vitamins and dietary fibre which can help maintain optimal body weight, prevent Alzheimer and cardiovascular disease. At the same time, it also contains some anti-nutritional factors which have adverse effects on the digestion, absorption and utilization of nutrients. Cellular and metabolic events are induced by water absorption during seed germination. After absorbing water, soybean dry seeds begin to mobilize organelles and enzyme activities, repair and activate physiological and biochemical processes, and start basic metabolism. After that, by controlling the key factors of metabolism, the cells complete the process of material transformation, energy metabolism, ROS balance, cell wall acidification and looseness, hypocotyl elongation, etc. and finish germination. As a result, cell metabolism causes significant changes in proteins, lipids, sugars, vitamins and minerals, and increases in some beneficial functional nutritional factors for humans and animals, the other anti-nutritional factors decreased obviously, which greatly improved the taste quality and economic value of soybean. This paper introduced the germination physiology, functional nutrients and their metabolic pathways during soybean germination. This study has important reference value for the study of theory and practice technology of soybean germination.

Keywords:
soybean; germination; functional nutrients; key control factors of metabolism