Cereal Chem 69:198-202   |  VIEW ARTICLE

Beta-Glucan-Enriched Fractions from Laboratory-Scale Dry Milling and Sieving of Barley and Oats.

B. E. Knuckles, M. M. Chiu, and A. A. Betschart. Copyright 1992 by the American Association of Cereal Chemists, Inc. 

Dry milling and sieving of barley and oats produced fractions that were enriched in beta-glucan [(1-3), (1- 4)-beta-D-glucan]. Hulled and hull-less varieties of barley and defatted rolled oats and oat bran, containing less than 10% moisture, were ground and sieved with a 325-mesh screen (45-micrometer openings). Coarse material retained by the screen was reground and resieved. The resulting coarse fraction, with a weight yield of 18-30%, contained 16-27% total beta-glucan. Further sieving of this beta-glucan-rich fraction with a 100- mesh screen (147-micrometer openings) yielded fractions representing 1.7-16.5% of the kernel weight and containing up to 28% beta-glucan for all test materials except Wanubet barley, in which soluble beta-glucan ranged from 60 to 70% of the total beta-glucan. Dry milling and sieving techniques can be used to prepare barley and oat fractions with beta-glucan concentrations 2.4-4.9 times those of the original grain.