Paper Title
Bioactivity of Cereal Sprouts Enriched Biscuits

Abstract
Over the past few years, the food sectors have paid more attention toward functional food development. Functional foods include food compounds such as vitamins, minerals, herbs, phytochemicals, and probiotics, which may provide a health benefits beyond basic nutrition. Cereals are considered as an important part of human diet across the world, apart from the fact that they are also rich in various health-promoting components (phenolics, chlorophylls and carotenoids). Sprouting of cereals is a process that can improve nutritional and health beneficial properties in a natural way. Nowadays, cereal-based confectionery products comprise a wide range of products which differ in composition, production methods, and sensory attributes. Biscuits are the most popular bakery products because of their convenience, ready to eat nature, affordable cost, availability in different tastes and long shelf-life. Hence, the objective of this research was to optimize the quantity of cereal sprouts to fortify biscuitswith bioactive phytochemicals which ensure antioxidant and antihyperglycemic activities. Wheat (WS) and barley (BS) sprouts were incorporated in biscuits by replacing 5, 10 and 20% of wheat flour.Higher levels of sprouts in biscuits exhibited highertotal chlorophyll contents, and the best yield was found in biscuit with 20% BS (0.19mgChl/g). The same trend was also observed for reducing power, β-carotene bleaching assay and superoxide anion free radical scavenging assay, where 20% BS biscuit showed the best results (5.11, 85.16 and 54.87 µmolTE/g, respectively). The potential of biscuits formulated with BS to inhibit α-glucosidase was significantly higher than WS and control biscuits as well. 20% BS excibited 38.25% inhibition of α-glucosidase. WS and BS have positive impact on the functional characteristics of biscuits. The fortification of biscuits with cereal sprouts represent a promising way for functional food development, due to its improved nutritional and bioactive properties. Keywords - Cereals, Sprouting, Phenolics, Bioactivity, Biscuits