Nutrients and antinutrients in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) cultivars after soaking and pressure cooking

Six promising cultivars of desi chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) viz.. 'GL 88341', 'GL 92162', 'GL 93011', 'GL 94008', 'GF 89133' and 'GG 1111' were analyzed for nutritional and antinutritional constituents as affected by soaking of seeds in water/salt solution followed by pressure cooking in autoclave. Soaking in distilled water and sodium chloride/sodium bicarbonate solutions decreased protein, methionine and tryptophan contents. However, the effect was most pronounced in salt solution. Soaking also decreased antinutrients, trypsin inhibitor activity, amyiase inhibitor activity and phenols. Phenols accounted for larger decrease. On pressure cooking, maximum decrease in antinutritional factors was recorded in case of soaking in sodium bicarbonate solution followed by pressure cooking for 30 min. Trypsin inhibitor activity decreased from 117.3 to 94.4 units/g whereas amylase inhibitor activity from 10.1 to 6.3 units/g.