agriculture Article Morphometric and Nutritional Characterization of the Main Spanish Lentil Cultivars Javier Plaza 1, * , M. Remedios Morales-Corts 1 , Rodrigo Pérez-Sánchez 1 , Isabel Revilla 2 and Ana M. Vivar-Quintana 2   Citation: Plaza, J.; Morales-Corts, M.R.; Pérez-Sánchez, R.; Revilla, I.; Vivar-Quintana, A.M. Morphometric and Nutritional Characterization of the Main Spanish Lentil Cultivars. Agriculture 2021, 11, 741. https:// doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11080741 Academic Editors: Jose C. Jimenez-Lopez and Alfonso Clemente Received: 21 July 2021 Accepted: 3 August 2021 Published: 4 August 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Plant Production Group, Faculty of Environmental and Agricultural Sciences, University of Salamanca, 37007 Salamanca, Spain; reme@usal.es (M.R.M.-C.); rodrigopere@usal.es (R.P.-S.) 2 Food Technology Group, Superior Polytechnic School of Zamora, University of Salamanca, 49022 Zamora, Spain; irevilla@usal.es (I.R.); avivar@usal.es (A.M.V.-Q.) * Correspondence: pmjavier@usal.es; Tel.: +34-654-518-435 Abstract: Nowadays, there is a growing demand for high-quality vegetal protein food products, such as pulses and lentils in particular. However, there is no scientific evidence on the nutritional and morphometric characterization of the main lentil cultivars in the Western Mediterranean area. For this reason, the aim of this work is to carry out a morphometric and nutritional characterization of the main Spanish lentil cultivars. Nutrient content assessment was performed on dry matter. The results showed that all studied cultivars are large and heavy lentils, except for the cultivar “Pardina”. They have high protein levels, ranging from 21% to 25%, which is higher than those found in any other pulse, as well as a high carbohydrate content, greater than 59% in all cases. Fiber content was higher than expected in “Armuña” and “Rubia Castellana” cultivars, ranging from 6% to 6.6%, and exceptionally high in the case of the cultivar “Pardina”, which reached 7.8%. Conversely, very low values were found for fat content, varying between 0.5% and 0.9%. Ca, Fe and Mg levels were remarkably higher (from 550 ppm to 851 ppm, from 98 ppm to 139 ppm and from 790 ppm to 989 ppm, respectively) than those found for other lentil cultivars, especially the high Mg content in the cultivars “Jaspeada” and “Microjaspeada”, both above 955 ppm. Clear differentiation was found between the cultivars “Rubia Castellana”, “Pardina” and those included in the Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) “Lenteja de la Armuña”. Overall, lentil cultivars included in the PGI “Lenteja de la Armuña” showed better morphometric and nutritional characteristics than cultivars “Pardina” or “Rubia Castellana”. Keywords: Lens culinaris; morphological characteristics; chemical composition; quality mark; pro- tein intake 1. Introduction In recent years, Europe has undergone a marked change in the dietary habits of its population, especially in Mediterranean countries, including Spain. This change is driven by the growing consumer demand for vegan or vegetarian food products [1], leading the agricultural sector to produce more vegetable-based foods, focusing on pulses due to their high protein content [2]. Furthermore, the European Union has recently committed itself to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the food sector by increasing the production of vegetable protein rather than animal protein [3–5]. Pulses are one of the food sources with the best nutritional properties whose consump- tion is associated with several benefits for human health [6,7]. The inverse relationship between pulses consumption and the risk of suffering from coronary heart disease, type II diabetes and obesity is particularly noteworthy. Moreover, pulses are associated with low levels of serum LDL cholesterol and high levels of serum HDL cholesterol [8,9]. Besides, legumes are essential components in sustainable agroecosystems as they are able to carry out biological nitrogen fixation [10,11]. Consequently, not only do they not require nitrogen Agriculture 2021, 11, 741. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture11080741 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/agriculture