Evaluation of Morpho-Physiological Traits and Phytochemical Composition of Selected Microgreens

Abstract

People are becoming more conscious about nutritional food because of the significant increase in diseases. Again, agricultural land is decreasing which creates a scarcity of nutritional foods. In this context, microgreens can be an excellent option as they can be grown in a controlled environment using various vertical farming. Microgreens are leafy green vegetables whose edible parts are harvested at the seedling stage. For successful further incorporation into the global food system and evaluation of their nutritional impacts, it is essential to determine microgreens morpho-physiological and nutritional properties. There were two phases of this experiment- investigating morpho-physiological parameters and evaluating biochemical parameters of the selected microgreens under laboratory conditions. The whole experiment was carried out under CRD with four replications. Eight vegetables are treated as mustard (Brassica juncea L.), radish (Raphanus sativus), chia (Salvia hispanica), red amaranth (Amaranthus tricolor Linn), coriander leaf (Coriandrum sativul L.), garden cress (Lepidium sativum), sesame (Sesamum indicum L.), and cabbage (Brassica oleracea var.). Among these microgreens, the best performed four vegetables (mustard, radish, chia and red amaranth) were selected for evaluating biochemical parameters.  This study found that radish microgreens provided better performance concerning morphological characteristics among the eight microgreens and red amaranth microgreens showed the highest bio-active compounds, protein, minerals and anti-oxidant activity among the four microgreens tested.