Research paper The disappearance of vitexin from Tartary buckwheat flour-water mixtures after the hydrothermal treatment Mateja GERM1*, Alena VOLLMANNOVÁ2, Július ÁRVAY2, Tomáš TÓTH2 and Aleksandra GOLOB1 1 Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana, Jamnikarjeva 101, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia 2 Department of Chemistry, Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra, Tr. A. Hlinku 2, SK-94901 Nitra, Slovakia * Corresponding author: mateja.germ@bf.uni-lj.si; E-mail addresses: Vollmannová Alena: alena.vollmannova@uniag.sk; Julius Árvay: julius.arvay@uniag.sk; Tomáš Tóth: tomas.toth@uniag.sk; Golob, Aleksandra: aleksandra.golob@bf.uni-lj.si; Germ, Mateja: mateja.germ@bf.uni-lj.si DOI https://doi.org/10.3986/fag0020 Received: May 26, 2021; accepted June 9, 2021. Keywords: Tartary buckwheat, vitexin, flour, dough, hydrothermal treatment, biochemical characteristics ABSTRACT Vitexin is an apigenin flavone glucoside with known biological functions. This research reported the effects of ini- tial temperature treatments of Tartary buckwheat flour mixture with water and time of methanol extraction from the cooked doughs on the amount of extractable vitexin. The mixtures of flour and water were initially hydrothermally treat- ed at temperatures from 25 °C to 95 °C. Afterward the mixtures were cooked at 95 °C for 20 min, and vitexin extracted at room temperature with 80% aqueous methanol for 20 min, 2 h and 8 h. The extractable vitexin was extracted during the same extraction times for the control in the nonhydrothermally treated Tartary buckwheat flour-water mixture samples. For the cooked dough samples, the hydrothermal treatments were important in terms of the extractability of vitexin. The extractable vitexin persisted in the control samples during the extraction time up to 8 hours, while in the hydrothermally treated and cooked dough samples, there remained none detectable vitexin. The high-temperature ini- tial treatments during dough preparation appeared not to prevent the degradation of vitexin in Tartary buckwheat flour. Fagopyrum 38 (2): 31-34 (2021) 31 INTRODUCTION Vitexin is a vital nutraceutical known for suppressing renal cell carcinoma and wound healing effects (Kim et al., 2005; He et al., 2016; Li et al., 2020; Bektas et al., 2020; Peng et al., 2021). Abbasi et al. (2021) reported the neuroprotective effects of vitexin, the experiments with rats have shown that vitexin has anticonvulsant effects in the brain. Ganesan and Xu (2017) reviewed comprehensive in- formation on various cancers and therapeutic possibili- ties of vitexin and isovitexin. According to Ganesan and Xu (2017), both, in vitro and in vivo studies are suggest- ing that vitexin and its isomere isovitexin are compounds with chemopreventive activity against various cancers, as they are included in proapoptotic events and/or auto- phagy. Li et al. (2020) reported the suppression of renal cell carcinoma by vitexin. Peng et al. (2020) reviewed re- cent advances in studies of absorption, metabolism, and bioactivity of vitexin. Bektas et al. (2020) recently evalu- ated the wound healing effect of chitosan-based gel for- mulation containing vitexin. This activity is possibly through interaction at the benzodiazepine site of the gamma-aminobutyric acid type A receptor complex (Abbasi et al., 2012). Vitexin has shown free radical scavenging activity in ultraviolet B-ir- radiated cultured human dermal fibroblasts (Dong et al., 2011). Due to important effects on human health, Tartary buckwheat has become more widely used for preparing gluten-free foods (Kreft 2016, Costantini et al. 2014, Capraro et al. 2018). Tartary buckwheat contains phe- nolic compounds that are reported to have antioxidant properties (Holasova et al. 2002;). Hydrothermal treatments comprised heating with steam or hot water and followed by slow cooling and drying. The present study aimed to define the effects of temperature and moisture in Tartary buckwheat dough preparation on the concentration of extractable vitexin. MATERIAL AND METHODS The Tartary buckwheat flour (cv. ‘Zlata’) was obtained from Rangus Mill (Šentjernej, Slovenia). Flour (100 g) containing 8% moisture was mixed for 1 min with 200 g water at 25 °C, 45 °C, 60 °C, 80 °C, or 95 ° C. The resulting doughs were kept in a chamber for 20 min at their respec- tive temperatures. After this treatment, each dough sam- ple was heated to 95 °C for a further 20 min. After cooling these cooked dough samples to room temperature, they were frozen (-18 °C) until they were lyophilized. The com- plete procedures were performed independently as three repetitions. The freeze-dried samples were milled and used in the methanol extractions for HPLC analyses. Ex- traction and HPLC analyses were performed according to the methods described by Germ et al. (2019). The normal distribution of the data was tested using Shapiro-Wilk tests. Differences between treatments were tested using one-way analysis of variance followed by Duncan multiple range test. The level of significance was accepted at p <0.05. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The extractability of vitexin using 80% aqueous methanol from the control Tartary buckwheat flour sam- ples and following the cooking (95 °C, 20 min) of the hydrothermally treated (25, 45, 60, 80, 95 °C) Tartary buckwheat dough samples are illustrated in Table 1. In the controls, all of the extractable vitexin was extracted within the first 20 min, which remained similar after the extraction times of 2 h and 8 h. Thus, vitexin was easily extractable from the untreated Tartary buckwheat flour using 80% aqueous methanol. For the hydrothermal treatments of the doughs at 25, 40, and 60 °C, the vitexin extracted from the cooked doughs using 20% aqueous methanol was lower than de- tection limits. Control samples contained about 5.4 to Figure 1. Vitexin molecule. The upper part of the vitexin molecule is glucose, the lower part of the molecule is apigenin. Germ et al. (2021): Vitexin in Tartary buckwheat 32 6.4 mg vitexin∙kg-1 dry matter (Table 1). Also, after all of the dough hydrothermal treatments (i.e., 25, 40, 60, 80, 95 °C), there were no more detectable concentrations of vitexin extracted from the cooked doughs in any of the times of extraction. Thus, in one scenario vitexin might be degraded by the conditions of hydrothermal treat- ment of the Tartary buckwheat doughs. Alternatively, vitexin might form insoluble complexes. In nonhydrothermally treated Tartary buckwheat flour samples, extraction of vitexin with 80% aqueous methanol was complete within 20 min of extraction. The sugar part of vitexin is glucose (Figure 1). The aglicone part is apigenin. For the difference to rutin, which is O glucozide (sugar part and the flavonoid part of the molecule are connect- ed by oxygen), is vitexin C glicoside (sugar and flavonoid part are connected by carbon-carbon bond). C glycosides are more stable than O glycosides, and they are less likely to be split apart. However, it is possible. One possibility for disappearance of vitexin after hy- drothermal treatment is its oxidation, and by additional –OH group there could appeared orientin. But no orien- tin was detected in the samples. According to our knowledge, this is the first report that Tartary buckwheat contains in grain and flour a flavonoid vitexin, which is stable during the prolong ex- traction by methanolic extraction medium, but not stable when the mixture of flour with water is exposed to hy- drothermal condition. Regarding importance of vitexin in health-preserving nutrition it is a challenge to study further the appearance and disappearance of vitexin and related metabolites in Tartary buckwheat. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This publication was supported by the Operational program Integrated Infrastructure within the project: Demand-driven research for the sustainable and inno- vative food, Drive4SIFood 313011V336 (70%), co-fi- nanced by the European Regional Development Fund, and by Slovenian Research Agency, programs P1-0212 (10%) and P3-0395 (10%), and project L4-9305 (10%), co-financed by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food, Republic of Slovenia. Authors are thankful to Prof. Ivan Kreft (Nutrition Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia) his advice and cooperation. Extraction time Control 25°C 40°C 60°C 80°C 95°C 20 min 5.4 + 1.2 a ˂LOD ˂LOD ˂LOD ˂LOD ˂LOD 2 hours 6.3 + 0.4 a ˂LOD ˂LOD ˂LOD ˂LOD ˂LOD 8 hours 6.4 + 0.4 a ˂LOD ˂LOD ˂LOD ˂LOD ˂LOD Means followed by the same superscript letters are not significantly different at p < 0.05 (n = 3). Legend: LOD – under detection limit Table 1. Time-courses of vitexin extraction (mg vitexin∙kg-1 dry matter) with 20% (v/v) aqueous methanol for Tartary buckwheat flour (C; control) and following cooking (95 °C, 20 min) of the hydrothermally treated (25, 45, 60, 80, 95 °C) Tartary buckwheat dough samples. Data are means ± standard deviation (n = 3), except for treatments where vitexin concentration was under the limit of detection.