Green extraction of chickpea (Cicer arietinum)-based functional beverage: Assessment of nutritional quality and storage stability

Abstract

Microwave and ultrasound were investigated for their ability to enhance the nutritional content in chickpea ( Cicer arietinum )-based functional beverage extraction, and the obtained results were compared to conventional beverage processing. This was followed by the storage stability analyses in terms of changes in physicochemical (pH, TSS, color), microbial, and functional (total phenolic content, total flavonoid content, antioxidant activity) properties for 21 days. The findings of our study indicate that ultrasound and microwave processing techniques exhibit distinct advantages over conventional processing in terms of not only enhancing the protein yield but also retaining the bioactive and functional compounds during storage. Among the extraction methods, microwave was found more effective with respect to higher protein yield (7.89 ± 0.11 g/100 g of beverage), protein solubility (18.54% ± 0.23%), and in vitro protein digestibility (90.79% ± 0.64%) at the optimum conditions (temperature: 65.8 °C and time: 6.7 min). Regarding storage stability, microwave processing led to a remarkable increase of 47.32% in total phenolic content and 58.34% in total flavonoid content. The microbial study revealed less total bacterial and fungal counts in microwave and ultrasonically processed beverages over the storage period. Moreover, the study also revealed that the processing treatments applied did not result in significant alterations in the pH and acidity values of the chickpea beverage.