Cereal Chem 68:177-179   |  VIEW ARTICLE

Semiwet Milling of Pearl Millet for Reduced Goitrogenic ity.

C. F. Klopfenstein, H. W. Leipold, and J. E. Cecil. Copyright 1991 by the American Association of Cereal Chemists, Inc. 

It is well established that pearl millet grain (Pennisetum glaucum: syn., P. typhoideum, P. americanum) is goitrogenic, mainly because of its C-glycosylfavone content. Concentrations of the antithyroid compounds have been found to be much higher in the bran than in the endosperm portions of the grain. Traditional dry- roller milling processes are not very efficient at fractionating the grain because of its small size and firmly embedded germ. Therefore, semiwet roller milling was used to separate the grain into flour, shorts, red dog, and bran fractions. Rat-feeding studies showed that the semiwet milling process (in which 25% of the grain was removed as bran) successfully removed the antithyroid properties, as demonstrated by patterns of serum thyroid hormones and thyroid histopathology. Nearly all previous studies have used gray-seeded pearl millet. This study showed that brown- and yellow-seeded pearl millet also had antithyroid effects. Although flavone concentration was higher in the yellow than in the brown millet, antithyroid effects seemed somewhat less severe for the yellow millet, indicating differences in antithyroid potency and/or concentrations for three C-glycosylflavones that have been identified in pearl millet grain.