AUTHOR=John Racheal , Bartwal Arti , Jeyaseelan Christine , Sharma Paras , Ananthan R , Singh Amit Kumar , Singh Mohar , Gayacharan , Rana Jai Chand , Bhardwaj Rakesh TITLE=Rice bean-adzuki bean multitrait near infrared reflectance spectroscopy prediction model: a rapid mining tool for trait-specific germplasm JOURNAL=Frontiers in Nutrition VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2023 YEAR=2023 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/nutrition/articles/10.3389/fnut.2023.1224955 DOI=10.3389/fnut.2023.1224955 ISSN=2296-861X ABSTRACT=In the present era of climate change, underutilized crops such as ricebean and adzukibean are emerging to ensure food security due to their inherent potential towards extreme conditions along with high nutritional status. These legumes are bestowed with higher nutritional attributes such as protein, fiber, vitamins and minerals than other major legumes of Vigna family. While the typical nutrient evaluation methods are expensive and time consuming, the need of non-invasive techniques such as Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy (NIRS) combined with chemometrics have proved to be a better alternative. The present study aims to develop combined NIRS prediction model for ricebean-adzukibean flour samples to estimate total starch, protein, fat, sugars, phytate, dietary fibre, anthocyanin, minerals and RGB value. Twenty morphometrically diverse accessions in each crop were selected of which fifteen accessions were selected for training set and five for validation of NIRS prediction model. Each trait required unique combination of derivatives, gaps, smoothening and scatter correction techniques. The best fit models were selected based on high RSQ and RPD values. High RSQ values of >0.9 were achieved for most of the studied parameters indicating high accuracy models except for minerals, fat and phenol with RSQ< 0.6 for validation set. The generated models would facilitate the rapid nutritional exploitation of underutilized pulses such as adzuki and rice bean, showcasing their considerable potential to be functional foods for health promotion.