NONPROTEIN NITROGEN CONTENTS OF SOME GRAIN LEGUMES

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Abstract
The seeds of nine grain legume species were analyzed for nonprotein nitrogen (NPN), amino acids (AA) in NPN, total nucleic acids and nucleic acid nitrogen (NAN). The range in amounts of low molecular weight NPN as determined by ultrafiltration was 16–75 mg/g N for the nine species. The range in NAN was very small and the average of all species was 23.4 mg/g N or 1.05 mg/g seed. Arginine, alanine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid and glycine were the major AA constituents in the ultrafiltrate NPN of six samples of field pea, fababean and field bean. Twenty percent of the nitrogen (N) of the NPN was in protein AA in fababean while the values were 59–75% for field pea and field bean. The remainder along with the NAN was equal to 3.6–5.7% of the seed N.