Prediction of Key Food Industry Functional Traits of Formulated Ingredients Using Underutilized Dryland Cereals and Pulses Based on Nutritional, Compositional and Functional Data Analysis/Modelling

ICRISAT: ? Dr. Saikat Datta Mazumdar, Principal Scientist (PI of the project) - M.Sc. Food Science and Technology - Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore India and Ph.D. Natural Sciences, Phillips University, Marburg, Germany ? Dr. Anitha Raman, Statistician - Ph.D. Statistics (Biometrics), University of Madras, Chennai, India / International Rice Research Institute, Philippines. ? Dr. Vetriventhan, Senior Scientist – Ph.D. in Plant Breeding and Genetics from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), Tamil Nadu, India. ? Dr Ashok Kumar, Principal Scientist – Ph.D. from Division of Genetics, Indian Agricultural Research Institute ? Ms. Priyanka Durgalla, Senior Scientific Officer – M.Sc. Food Technology, OTRI, JNTU, Anantapur, India HarvestPlus: ? Dr M. Govindaraj, Senior Scientist - Ph.D. Plant Breeding and Genetics, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) ? Michael Tedla Diressie, HarvestPlus – PhD candidate at the University of Hohenheim, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences. University of Kentucky ? Dr. Akinbode A. Adedeji, Associate Professor - Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Department, University of Kentucky, Lexington Kentucky, USA Summary Dryland crops such as millets (e.g. proso millet and finger millet) and pulses (e.g. chickpea and pigeon pea) though climate resilient and highly nutritious, are still underutilized. These crops are grown by small-holder farmers mostly in the drylands. Globally, chickpea and pigeon are important dryland pulse crops with a global production of together grown ~20 m tons from 21 m ha (https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/ accessed on 19 July 2022), while finger millet and proso millet are grown in about 6 m ha (4-4.5 m ha & 1.5 m ha) (Vetriventhan et al. 2020). Creating a "demand pull/push" for such crops depends on promoting their usage, in the food industry, as sources of key ingredients that provide not only valuable macro and micronutrients, bioactive compounds, providing health promoting benefits etc., but also as sources of ingredients imparting different functionalities, in product formulations. Thus, with the above background and with the aim of leveraging the nutritional, physico-chemical and functional properties of select dryland (underutilised) crops, the proposed concept note focuses on developing a “Response Surface Methodology” based predictive model that can be used to identify crops/crop varieties to be used as a source of ingredients: a) Thickeners, emulsifiers, and stabilizers; b) Bulking agents; and c) High nutrient density (high: protein, iron, zinc and calcium). The proposed predictive model shall be developed based on the data sets available with ICRISAT (finger millet, chickpea and pigeon pea), HarvestPlus (finger millet) and the University of Kentucky (Proso millet). This model will increase the application of many underutilized grains in foods.