Despite their health advantages, food legumes have a limited impact on human health due to a variety of factors, including low protein and starch digestibility, low mineral bioavailability, and high antinutritional factors.

This study compared the nutrients and antinutrients of different varieties of food legumes before and after soaking and germination treatment. A fluctuation between the chemical and phytochemical composition results was observed. Due to species*variety*treatment interaction, indeed, the species and varieties that are the subject of the present study act differently with respect to the treatments carried out. In fact, sugars and proteins content increased significantly in the germination-treated varieties, following a decrease during the soaking treatment. Raw chickpeas had the greatest amount of total and reducing sugars, respectively, with maximum amounts of 1.30 g and 4.45 g of glucose equivalent per gram of dry matter.

Raw, soaked, and germinated fava bean varieties have greater average crude fiber rates than chickpea and lentil varieties, respectively, with 9.83%, 10.24%, and 10.16%. It was found that germination treatment improved the nutritional properties of the studied food legumes. Additionally, the treatments also resulted in the reduction of total phenolic compounds, tannins, and flavonoids contents. However, the changes varied depending on the variety and species of food legumes.

Overall, this work demonstrated that germination positively affects the nutritional composition, leading to the reduction of antinutritional factors in the studied food legumes. They prove to be the most appropriate method to take advantage of the benefits of food legumes.

Keywords: Fava bean, chickpea, lentil, soaking, germination, antinutritional factors.