Vacuum impregnation assisted simultaneous micronutrients fortification and phytic acid reduction in lentils

A vacuum impregnation (VI) assisted simultaneous micronutrient fortification and phytic acid (PA) reduction strategy is developed to enhance micronutrient content and its bioavailability in the lentils matrix by reducing PA-to-mineral molar ratio. Lentils dipped in micronutrient solution (iron and zinc) were VI for 3 h, i.e., subjecting at 50 mbar vacuum pressure for 5 min, followed by atmospheric relaxation for 3 and 9 min (V3 and V9), respectively. The V9 resulted in an enhanced water diffusion rate with higher migration of micronutrients (two-fold) compared to the atmospheric soaking. With fast water diffusion to cotyledons and subsequent leaching of PA, vacuum impregnation offers significantly higher PA reduction than atmospheric soaking without impacting the major quality characteristics. The developed process was able to reduce the PA-to-mineral molar ratio of iron and zinc from 4.85 to 12.59 to 0.26 and 0.10, respectively.