Elemental composition and nutritional characteristics of spelt flours and wholemeals

Spelt (Triticum spelta) is an ancient wheat that has become a popular raw material for bakery products in the last decade owing to its unique nutritional value. In this study, the elemental and nutritional characteristics were investigated in flours and wholemeals from eleven genetic resources of spelt. Hulled and cleaned spelt grains were analysed for thousand-grain weight (TGW), grain length, and grain width characteristics. Spelt flours and wholemeals were pre- pared in two laboratory mills and characterised for multi-element composition, protein, total arabinoxylan (TOT-AX) and water-extractable arabinoxylan content (WE-AX). A total of twelve elements belonging to macro-(K, P, Mg, S, Ca) and micro-(Na, Fe, Mn, Zn, Mo, Cu, Cr) ele-ments were determined. The highest coefficient of variation was found for Zn, Na and Cu in flour and for Cr, Na and WE-AX in wholemeal. Proteins ranged from 13.3-21.1%, TOT-AX from 11.4-37.3%, and WE-AX from 4.3-8.0%. Highly significant differences between spelt genetic re- sources were found for WE-AX, S, Na and TKW and between fractions for all macroelements, Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu, TOT-AX and WE-AX. A very strong positive Pearson correlation (>0.80) be- tween flour and wholemeal was found for P, Zn, WE-AX and four pairs of compositional traits (P-Cu, Zn-P, Zn-Cu, protein-S). The study showed that spelt wholemeal is a higher source of minerals (K, P, Mg, Fe, Mn, Zn) and dietary fibre (total arabinoxylans) compared to spelt flour.