In the last decade, there has been an increase in the use of sprouted grains in human diet and a parallel increase in the scientific literature dealing with their nutritional traits and phytochemical contents. This review examines the physiological and biochemical changes during the germination process, and the effects on final sprout composition in terms of macro- and micro-nutrients and bioactive compounds. The main factors affecting sprout composition are taken into consideration: genotype, environmental conditions experimented by the mother plant, germination conditions. In particular, the review deepens the recent knowledge on the possible elicitation factors useful for increasing the phytochemical contents. Microbiological risks and post-harvest technologies are also evaluated, and a brief summary is given of some important in vivo studies matching with the use of grain sprouts in the diet. All the species belonging to Poaceae (Gramineae) family as well as pseudocereals species are included.

Sprouts and microgreens have attracted tremendous interest across multiple disciplines in recent years. Here, we critically review the most recent advances to underscore research prospects and niches, and related challenges, not yet addressed or fully pursued. In particular, we report a number of themes that merit special attention as a result of their relevance to plant science, nutrition, health, and zootechnics: (1) species not yet or inadequately investigated, such as wild plants, and fruit tree strains; (2) abiotic and biotic factors, and biostimulants, for elicitation strategies and metabolic engineering; (3) sanitization and processing technologies to obtain high-quality products; (4) digestive fate and impact of bioactive elements, antinutrients, and allergens on human nutrition; (5) experimental challenges to researching health benefits; (6) the opportunity to generate natural product libraries for drug discovery; and (7) sprouts in animal feeding to improve both animal health and the nutritional value of animal products for the human diet. The convergence of different themes involving interdisciplinary competencies advocate fascinating research pursuits, for example, the elicitation of metabolic variants to generate natural product collections for identification and selection of bioactive chemicals with a role as nutraceuticals, key constituents of functional foods, or interactive partners of specific drugs.

Ornamental plant production constitutes an important sector of the horticultural industry worldwide and fungal infections, that dramatically affect the aesthetic quality of plants, can cause serious economic and crop losses. The need to reduce the use of pesticides for controlling fungal outbreaks requires the development of new sustainable strategies for pathogen control. In particular, early and accurate large-scale detection of occurring symptoms is critical to face the ambitious challenge of an effective, energy-saving, and precise disease management. Here, the new trends in digital-based detection and available tools to treat fungal infections are presented in comparison with conventional practices. Recent advances in molecular biology tools, spectroscopic and imaging technologies and fungal risk models based on microclimate trends are examined. The revised spectroscopic and imaging technologies were tested through a case study on rose plants showing important fungal diseases (i.e., spot spectroscopy, hyperspectral, multispectral, and thermal imaging, fluorescence sensors). The final aim was the examination of conventional practices and current e-tools to gain the early detection of plant diseases, the identification of timing and spacing for their proper management, reduction in crop losses through environmentally friendly and sustainable production systems. Moreover, future perspectives for enhancing the integration of all these approaches are discussed.

In Mediterranean environments the adoption of Conservation Agriculture (CA) would allow growers to achieve environmental, agronomic and economic sustainability. We investigated the effect of different combination of crop establishment treatments and crop sequence (conventional tillage (CT) and durum wheat monocropping (WW); conventional tillage (CT) and durum wheat following faba beans (WF); zero tillage (ZT) and durum wheat monocropping (WW); zero tillage (ZF) and durum wheat following faba beans (WF) on yield, grain quality traits as well as on disease incidence and severity in durum wheat (var. Saragolla). The results of two years of data of a long-term experiment (seven-year experiment; split-plot design) are discussed. The CA approach (ZT + WF), which always induced the highest grain yields (6.1 t ha⁻¹ and 3.3 t ha⁻¹ in 2016 and 2017) thanks to an increased number of spikes m⁻² (296 vs. 269 and 303 vs. 287 spikes m⁻² in 2016 and 2017, respectively) as well as a more pronounced ear length, demonstrated significantly positive influences in terms of grain quality. It promoted grain protein accumulation (12.1% for ZT + WF vs. 11.4% for ZT + WW and 12.4% for ZT + WF vs. 10.6% for ZT + WW in 2016 and 2017) and improved the gluten quality (in terms of sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS) sedimentation test) and colour of the grain. The abundance of crop residues determined a higher incidence and severity of Zymoseptoria tritici leaf symptoms under the CA system; nevertheless, the late appearance of infection was the main reason for not affecting yield and quality traits. The presence of faba beans (WF) in the rotation significantly reduced leaf symptoms in Z. tritici.

Seeds from Citrus species represent a relevant by-product of the juice industry and a potential source of bioactive compounds such as phenols and other antioxidants. Sprouting could be an intriguing idea to enhance the content of these compounds, as explored for other fruittree species. In this experiment, the sprouting performance, the concentration of total phenols and phenolic acids, and the antioxidant activity of seeds and sprouts were evaluated for bitter orange (Citrus aurantium L. seedlings), blonde orange (Citrus sinensis (L.) Osbeck cv.Biondocomune), sweet orange (Citrus sinensis (L.) Osbeck seedlings), lemon (Citrus limon (L.) Osbeck cv.Femminello), and mandarin (Citrus reticulata Blanco cv.Tardivo di Ciaculli). The germination was high for all genotypes except for mandarin, but it took 4–8 weeks. Sprouts did not differ among genotypes for size and generally had hard consistency of cotyledons and a bitter taste. The concentrations of total phenols and phenolic acids of seeds and sprouts varied with the genotype, while the antioxidant activity was not statistically different among treatments. Sprouting increased both the concentration of phenolic compounds and antioxidant activity but no correlation was found between them, suggesting that other antioxidants, besides phenols, are present. Given the slow germination and the bitter taste, Citrus sprouts appear unsuitable for homemade production aimed at direct consumption, while they may have perspectives for extraction of food additives, cosmetics, and pharmaceutics.

This work was aimed at investigating the effects of rate and timing of nitrogen fertilization applied to a maternal wheat crop on phytochemical content and antioxidant activity of edible sprouts and wheatgrass obtained from offspring grains. We hypothesized that imbalance in N nutrition experienced by the mother plants translates into transgenerational responses on seedlings obtained from the offspring seeds. To this purpose, we sprouted grains of two bread wheat cultivars (Bologna and Bora) grown in the field under four N fertilization schedules: constantly well N fed with a total of 300 kg N ha⁻¹; N fed only very early, i.e., one month after sowing, with 60 kg N ha⁻¹; N fed only late, i.e., at initial shoot elongation, with 120 kg N ha⁻¹; and unfertilized control. We measured percent germination, seedling growth, vegetation indices (by reflectance spectroscopy), the phytochemical content (total phenols, phenolic acids, carotenoids, chlorophylls), and the antioxidant activity (by gold nanoparticles photometric assay) of extracts in sprout and wheatgrass obtained from the harvested seeds. Our main finding is that grains obtained from crops subjected to late N deficiency produced wheatgrass with much higher phenolic content (as compared to the other N treatments), and this was observed in both cultivars. Thus, we conclude that late N deficiency is a stressing condition which elicits the production of phenols. This may help counterbalance the loss of income related to lower grain yield in crops subjected to such an imbalance in N nutrition.