The food industry produces a large amount of onion wastes, making it necessary to search for possible ways for their utilization. One way could be to use these onion wastes as a natural source of high-value functional ingredients, since onion are rich in several groups of compounds, which have perceived benefits to human health. The objective of this work is to gain knowledge of any differences between the different onion wastes obtained from industry and non-commercial bulbs to use them as food ingredients rich in specific compounds. The results showed that brown skin and top-bottom could be potentially used as functional ingredient rich in dietary fibre, mainly in insoluble fraction, and in total phenolics and flavonoids, with high antioxidant activity. Moreover, brown skin showed a high concentration of quercetin aglycone and calcium, and top-bottom showed high concentration of minerals. Outer scales could be used as source of flavonols, with good antioxidant activity and content of dietary fibre. However, inner scales could be an interesting source of fructans and alk(en)yl cystein sulphoxides. In addition, discarded onions (cvs Recas and Figueres) could be used as a good source of dietary fibre, and cv Recas also as a source of phenolics compounds.

Changes in starch, functional, and microstructural characteristics that occurred in chickpea and lentil under soaking, cooking, and industrial dehydration processing were evaluated. Available starch in raw legumes represented 57-64%, and resistant starch (RS) is a significant component. As a result of cooking, available starch contents of soaked chickpea and lentil were significantly increased (21 and 12%, respectively) and RS decreased (65 and 49%, respectively) compared to raw flours. A similar trend was exhibited by dehydration, being more relevant in lentil (73% of RS decrease). The minimum nitrogen solubility of raw flours was at pH 3, and a high degree of protein insolubilization (80%) was observed in dehydrated flours. The raw legume flours exhibited low oil-holding capacities, 0.95-1.10 mL/g, and did not show any change by thermal processing, whereas water-holding capacities rose to 4.80-4.90 mL/g of sample. Emulsifying activity and foam capacity exhibited reductions as a result of cooking and industrial dehydration processing. The microstructural observations were consistent with the chemical results. Thus, the obtained cooked and dehydrated legume flours could be considered as functional ingredients for food formulation.

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