What is it about?
We have studied how sprouting black corn changes its starch and flour. They found tiny crystals in the starch and watched sugars shift during sprouting: first sucrose, then glucose/maltose. This changed how quickly our bodies digest the starch — fastest on day 3, slower on days 1 and 6. Less "resistant" starch remained after sprouting.
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Why is it important?
Better Food Design: Understanding exactly how germination changes digestion speed (fast vs. slow vs. resistant starch) allows food scientists to tailor sprouting times to create maize products with specific health benefits (e.g., sustained energy, lower blood sugar spikes, better gut health). Functional Ingredients: Discovering and characterizing the starch nanocrystals opens doors for using them as natural, functional ingredients in foods or supplements (e.g., for texture, as nutrient carriers, or as prebiotics). Healthier Products: Linking changes in sugars (sucrose, glucose, maltose, raffinose) and starch structure directly to digestibility provides a roadmap for developing maize-based foods with improved nutritional profiles. Optimized Processing: Knowing how germination affects viscosity and texture helps optimize processing methods for sprouted maize flour. Value of Indigenous Crops: It highlights the unique properties and potential health benefits of underutilized crops like Creole black maize, supporting biodiversity and sustainable agriculture.
Perspectives
One of the novelties of this work is that TEM has shown that this starch contains nanocrystals with orthorhombic crystal structure, detected for the first time in germination studies. More importantly, this energy source is not involved in nucleation, as detected by X-ray diffraction, and does not change significantly, opening a new window for its exploration in different fields.
PhD Leonardo Alexis Alonso
Universidad de los Llanos
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Evaluation of changes in physical and chemical properties, carbohydrate profile and in vitro digestion properties of isolated starch and flours from creole black maize during germination, International Journal of Biological Macromolecules, June 2025, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2025.144646.
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