Bored of the regular white flour for your tasty tortillas? National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute got you back. The institute has released black wheat, a variety of wheat that is nutritionally rich and is a healthier alternative. Not only does it help to improve your health but also fetch better prices to the farmers. So, get ready to decorate your palate with the colours.
When it comes to cereals, wheat dominates. It is a multi-purpose cereal. Every processed food product contains wheat as a constituent, let it be noodles, semolina, bread or biscuits. The contribution of wheat to the food industry is indeed big and it is natural for scientists to be concerned about the nutritional development of such an important cereal.
Background
As mentioned above it is developed at the National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute, Punjab by Dr Monika Garg, the scientist behind this wonderful product. It is a biofortified, gluten-free, anthocyanin-rich variety of wheat.
Nutrition and benefits
Talking about nutrition, black wheat, as the name indicates is rich in anthocyanins, which contribute to the colour. These are well-known antioxidants, that help to prevent cardiovascular diseases, cancer, obesity, ageing, diabetes and inflammation. It possesses 100-200 ppm of anthocyanins when compared to normal wheat with only 5ppm of the same. There will be no change in taste or texture, only the colour and nutritional content is varied here. They also exhibit higher iron and zinc content than their counterpart. What do you think? Isn’t it an absolute health package?
Yield and profit
Black wheat yields less than normal wheat. But, where the normal wheat is sold at Rs.1980 per quintal in the market, black wheat is sold at Rs.4500 by the farmers.
Attention farmers!! Get your normal wheat production replaced with this black wonder and you, yes you who is reading this swap your white wheat with this one, because you already know why.