Cereal Chem 68:48-51   |  VIEW ARTICLE

Potential for Beta-Glucan Enrichment in Brans Derived from Oat (Avena sativa L.) Cultivars of Different (1-3),(1-4)-Beta-D-Glucan Concentrations.

P. J. Wood, J. Weisz, and P. Fedec. Copyright 1991 by the American Association of Cereal Chemists, Inc. 

Eleven cultivars of oats were fractionated into coarse and fines fractions by a simple milling procedure. There were significant differences between cultivars in the (1-3),(1-4)-beta-D-glucan (beta-glucan) concentration of the whole groat (3.91-6.82%) and in the bran (5.81-8.89%). The average bran yield of 53.3% produced an average beta-glucan concentration in the bran that was one and a half times the concentration of the groat. Although there was a weakly significant correlation between groat beta-glucan and bran beta-glucan (r2 = 0.823), there was sufficient variation in the ratio of bran to groat beta-glucan (1.28-1.60) to observe significant changes in the ranking of cultivars for bran beta-glucan after milling. The average starch concentration of the groat (59.1%) dropped to 49.3% in the bran and was raised to 69.7% in the fines fraction. Starch was less variable than beta-glucan with a between-cultivar coefficient of variation of 4.9% in the groat and 6.9% in the bran compared with 15.9 and 13.8%, respectively, for beta-glucan.