UV and Visible Spectrum LED Lighting as Abiotic Elicitors of Bioactive Compounds in Sprouts, Microgreens, and Baby Leaves—A Comprehensive Review including Their Mode of Action

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Abstract

Background: According to social demands, the agri-food industry must elaborate convenient safe and healthy foods rich in phytochemicals while minimising processing inputs like energy consumption. Young plants in their first stages of development represent great potential. Objective: This review summarises the latest scientific findings concerning the use of UV and visible spectrum LED lighting as green, sustainable, and low-cost technologies to improve the quality of sprouts, microgreens, and baby leaves to enhance their health-promoting compounds, focusing on their mode of action while reducing costs and energy. Results: These technologies applied during growing and/or after harvesting were able to improve physiological and morphological development of sprouted seeds while increasing their bioactive compound content without compromising safety and other quality attributes. The novelty is to summarise the main findings published in a comprehensive review, including the mode of action, and remarking on the possibility of its postharvest application where the literature is still scarce. Conclusions: Illumination with UV and/or different regions of the visible spectrum during growing and shelf life are good abiotic elicitors of the production of phytochemicals in young plants, mainly through the activation of specific photoreceptors and ROS production. However, we still need to understand the mechanistic responses and their dependence on the illumination conditions.

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Light signal transduction in higher plants.

Meng Chen, Joanne Chory, Christian Fankhauser (2004)

Plants utilize several families of photoreceptors to fine-tune growth and development over a large range of environmental conditions. The UV-A/blue light sensing phototropins mediate several light responses enabling optimization of photosynthetic yields. The initial event occurring upon photon capture is a conformational change of the photoreceptor that activates its protein kinase activity. The UV-A/blue light sensing cryptochromes and the red/far-red sensing phytochromes coordinately control seedling establishment, entrainment of the circadian clock, and the transition from vegetative to reproductive growth. In addition, the phytochromes control seed germination and shade-avoidance responses. The molecular mechanisms involved include light-regulated subcellular localization of the photoreceptors, a large reorganization of the transcriptional program, and light-regulated proteolytic degradation of several photoreceptors and signaling components.

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Signal transduction in responses to UV-B radiation.

Gareth Jenkins (2009)

UV-B radiation is a key environmental signal that initiates diverse responses in plants that affect metabolism, development, and viability. Many effects of UV-B involve the differential regulation of gene expression. The response to UV-B depends on the nature of the UV-B treatment, the extent of adaptation and acclimation to UV-B, and interaction with other environmental factors. Responses to UV-B are mediated by both nonspecific signaling pathways, involving DNA damage, reactive oxygen species, and wound/defense signaling molecules, and UV-B-specific pathways that mediate photomorphogenic responses to low levels of UV-B. Importantly, photomorphogenic signaling stimulates the expression of genes involved in UV-protection and hence promotes plant survival in UV-B. Photomorphogenic UV-B signaling is mediated by the UV-B-specific component UV RESISTANCE LOCUS8 (UVR8). Both UVR8 and CONSTITUTIVE PHOTOMORPHOGENESIS1 (COP1) are required for UV-B-induced expression of the ELONGATED HYPOCOTYL5 (HY5) transcription factor, which plays a central role in the regulation of genes involved in photomorphogenic UV-B responses.

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Definitions and potential health benefits of the Mediterranean diet: views from experts around the world

Antonia Trichopoulou, Miguel A. Martínez-González, Tammy YN Tong … (2014)

The Mediterranean diet has been linked to a number of health benefits, including reduced mortality risk and lower incidence of cardiovascular disease. Definitions of the Mediterranean diet vary across some settings, and scores are increasingly being employed to define Mediterranean diet adherence in epidemiological studies. Some components of the Mediterranean diet overlap with other healthy dietary patterns, whereas other aspects are unique to the Mediterranean diet. In this forum article, we asked clinicians and researchers with an interest in the effect of diet on health to describe what constitutes a Mediterranean diet in different geographical settings, and how we can study the health benefits of this dietary pattern.