Tartary Buckwheat in Human Nutrition

Tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum Gaertn.) originates in mountain areas of western China, and it is mainly cultivated in China, Bhutan, northern India, Nepal, and central Europe. Tartary buckwheat shows greater cold resistance than common buckwheat, and has traits for drought tolerance. Buckwheat can provide health benefits due to its contents of resistant starch, mineral elements, proteins, and in particular, phenolic substances, which prevent the effects of several chronic human diseases, including hypertension, obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and gallstone formation. The contents of the flavonoids rutin and quercetin are very variable among Tartary buckwheat samples from different origins and parts of the plants. Quercetin is formed after the degradation of rutin by the Tartary buckwheat enzyme rutinosidase, which mainly occurs after grain milling during mixing of the flour with water. High temperature treatments of wet Tartary buckwheat material prevent the conversion of rutin to quercetin.

The Story of a Re-Operating Windmill

Research on the history of the development of grain milling structures is a priority topic of the Department of Technical Sciences of the Transylvanian Museum Association. Quite a few publications and study volumes contain the results of the research. The present dissertation presents another grinding structure, the windmill, its reconstruction, creating a connection between the theoretical foundations and the practical implementation. Although it was built as a museum and tourist object, it is also a significant work from the point of view of technical history. The Felsőszentiván windmill is powered by a 14-meter-diameter windmill. The mill has a two-stage accelerator gear that increases the low, non-grinding speed of the wind turbine for the rotation typical of grindstone mills. The upper stones of a pair of grindstones rest on a vertical axis, and by raising this the gap between the stones can be adjusted. This determines the particle size of the grind. The windmill consists of three functional parts: a windmill, an accelerator gear and a grain mill made up of a pair of grindstones.

THE MILL TRADITIONAL CRAFTS OF DAGESTAN: ETHNIC CULTURE, TERMINOLOGY

The article is devoted to the characteristics of the traditions of mill crafts in Dagestan, their development in the historical perspective. The topic is poorly researched. At the same time, there are valuable observations on the topic made by Dagestani ethnographers. Admittedly, "mill" adaptations and crafts appear with the advent of agriculture, and crafts using water mills begin to develop in the conditions of arable farming. The design of water mills with a horizontal turbine is considered an invention of the Caucasian peoples. Watermills in Dagestan in the conditions of mountain rivers have become widespread. Researchers attribute the emergence of such crafts in Dagestan to the beginning of a new era. Written sources about such mills belong to the middle of the XIV century. On the basis of linguistic (terminology) materials, we can make a cautious conclusion that initially watermills were widespread in the Dagestan foothills. Then they spread to the mountain zone. The mill industries of Dagestan can be divided into flour-milling, grain-milling, and production of oils, pastes (urbech) from fruit seeds (apricot seed oil was especially popular), cereals (flax, hemp), oilseeds (sunflower), vegetables (pumpkin), and others.In the past, if a river flowed near the village, water mills were actively built. They were in every village and often there were several of them. In addition to public mills, there were privately owned and owned by individual tukhums mills. Water mills in Dagestan "survived" until the end of the twentieth century. Presumably in EIGHTEENTH and early NINETEENTH century in the plains and foothill zone of Dagestan began to spread of water mills with a vertical turbine, borrowed from Russian. In the twentieth century, steam, electric, and windmills were also used here. Today, historic watermills are still used in a number of places to make traditional urbecha paste (oil) and rarely flour.

Application of the response surface method (RSM) to optimize of the conditioning of primitive rye grain krzyca (Secale cereale var. multicaule) before milling

The aim of the current study is to optimize the conditioning process of a primitive rye called (in Polish) krzyca which has recently been reintroduced to farming. The experiment was conducted according to the Box-Behnken model with three independent variables: the temperature of water used for grain conditioning (10, 15, 20 oC), the duration of the conditioning process (4, 10, 16 h) and the final grain moisture (13, 14, 15 %). In the obtained flours, four dependent variables were determined (time of grain milling, yield of extraction flour, ash content of flour and falling number value). The obtained polynomial equations and response surface method showed on significance of the used ranges of independent values, with the highest impact noted for flour ash and falling number values.