From proteome to palate: proteomics-led insights into sensory quality in oats (Avena sativa L.)

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Background Oats ( Avena sativa L.) are a rapidly expanding ingredient in plant-based beverages, snacks and fermented products, where texture, flavour, aroma and colour shape consumer acceptance. A comparatively high lipid content (2-10% w/w) reduces milling efficiency and predisposes products to oxidative rancidity, while textural variation, bitterness and colour instability further constrain product development. The molecular basis for these processing and sensory challenges lies in the globulin-dominant grain proteome. Scope and approach This review synthesises advances in liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) proteomics to quantitatively profile the four protein groups shaping oat sensory quality: storage, grain softness-related, lipid-associated and metabolic and enzymatic proteins. It evaluates how these systems remodel under processing (kilning, roasting, extrusion, fermentation) and how multi-omics integration links proteomic data to genomic, lipidomic, metabolomic and volatilomic datasets. Key findings and conclusions Four candidate protein measures are highlighted as priorities for validation: the globulin-to-avenin ratio (texture and viscosity), vromindoline (VIN) abundance (grain softness), the oleosin-to-lipase ratio (oxidative stability and flavour shelf-life) and the branched-chain aminotransferase-to-alcohol dehydrogenase (BCAT-to-ADH) balance (malty-versus-fruity aroma). Two deployment routes are proposed: mapping candidate protein measures to protein quantitative trait loci (pQTL) for conversion to high-throughput DNA assays at breeding scale and deploying targeted proteomics panels for batch-level process control. Integrating proteomics with pan-genome-resolved isoforms and multi-omics datasets advances oat sensory science from descriptive correlation toward a proteomics-informed framework, pending multi-environment, product-level and sensory validation.