Sprouts and Microgreens: Trends, Opportunities, and Horizons for Novel Research

Abstract

Sprouts and microgreens have attracted tremendous interest across multiple disciplines in recent years. Here, we critically review the most recent advances to underscore research prospects and niches, and related challenges, not yet addressed or fully pursued. In particular, we report a number of themes that merit special attention as a result of their relevance to plant science, nutrition, health, and zootechnics: (1) species not yet or inadequately investigated, such as wild plants, and fruit tree strains; (2) abiotic and biotic factors, and biostimulants, for elicitation strategies and metabolic engineering; (3) sanitization and processing technologies to obtain high-quality products; (4) digestive fate and impact of bioactive elements, antinutrients, and allergens on human nutrition; (5) experimental challenges to researching health benefits; (6) the opportunity to generate natural product libraries for drug discovery; and (7) sprouts in animal feeding to improve both animal health and the nutritional value of animal products for the human diet. The convergence of different themes involving interdisciplinary competencies advocate fascinating research pursuits, for example, the elicitation of metabolic variants to generate natural product collections for identification and selection of bioactive chemicals with a role as nutraceuticals, key constituents of functional foods, or interactive partners of specific drugs.

Breeding of Buckwheat for Usage of Sprout and Pre-Harvest Sprouting Resistance

“…Seed sprouts are an atypical vegetable stage, and they have received attention as functional vegetables because of their beneficial nutritive value associated with amino acids, fibers, minerals and proteins [ 22 ]. In the Japanese market, a variety of different types of sprouts can be found, including broccoli ( Brassica oleracea L. var.…”

Amelioration Effect of LED Lighting in the Bioactive Compounds Synthesis during Carrot Sprouting

“…Sprouts and microgreens are valued as functional foods because of their greater concentrations of nutraceutical compounds as compared to the adult plant [11,12]. For this reason, plants during the first steps of their germination and growth show relevant health benefits for the consumer concerned about a healthy lifestyle.…”

Transgenerational Effects of Salt Stress Imposed to Rapeseed (Brassica napus var. oleifera Del.) Plants Involve Greater Phenolic Content and Antioxidant Activity in the Edible Sprouts Obtained from Offspring Seeds

“…Surprisingly, very few studies reported the effect of stress memory on secondary metabolites, despite these compounds, also known as phytochemicals, widely being recognized as key factors in stress tolerance, and despite the fact that they have been raising great interest in recent decades as healthy compounds in the human diet for their role as probiotics and antioxidants. A large body of literature on sprouts has focussed on the possible means to elicit their phytochemical content, as recently reviewed by Liu et al [ 17 ] and Galieni et al [ 18 ], from which it can be argued that applying environmental stresses during sprouting appears to be the most efficient strategy to achieve this goal. Thus, for example, Falcinelli et al [ 19 ] found that rapeseed sprouts obtained under moderate salinity had a higher content of phenolic compounds and higher antioxidant activity.…”

“…Thus, for example, Falcinelli et al [ 19 ] found that rapeseed sprouts obtained under moderate salinity had a higher content of phenolic compounds and higher antioxidant activity. To our knowledge, no research was conceived to specifically investigate the potential elicitation of secondary metabolites by applying the stressing conditions to the parental generation, and Galieni et al [ 18 ] first launched the idea to work on this direction.…”