Conventional and emerging processing techniques for the post-harvest reduction of antinutrients in edible legumes

Legumes have immense health benefits to humans and animals, while substantially contributing to soil amelioration. However since they contain several antinutients, customarily legumes go through several processes before they are used as plated items or as another food ingredient. The contents of antinutrients in legumes have been reduced by applying various traditional and avant-garde processing methods. The traditional ones, like dehulling, soaking, boiling, pressure cooking, sprouting and fermentation help in the reduction of certain antinutrients, such as alpha-galactosides, phytic acid, enzyme inhibitors, lathyrogens, lectins, saponins and tannins. There also has been contemporary research which indicates the effectiveness of some recent innovative processes, such as dielectric heating, extrusion, gamma-irradiation, ultrasound and high hydrostatic pressure in reducing antinutrients. This review is intended to assess the different types of antinutrients in legumes, their structure-function relations and the various processing methods which are going through as well as which have potentiality to be deployed in reducing or eliminating the antinutrients. Moreover, since these technological processes need to be optimised for more effectiveness, minimisation of antinutrients by using response surface methodology has also been highlighted. These processing techniques can be tailored or optimised to achieve targeted results.