Citation: Falcinelli, B.; Galieni, A.; Tosti, G.; Stagnari, F.; Trasmundi, F.; Oliva, E.; Scroccarello, A.; Sergi, M.; Del Carlo, M.; Benincasa, P. Effect of Wheat Crop Nitrogen Fertilization Schedule on the Phenolic Content and Antioxidant Activity of Sprouts and Wheatgrass Obtained from Offspring Grains. Plants 2022, 11, 2042. https://doi.org/10.3390/ plants11152042 Academic Editor: Petko Denev Received: 9 July 2022 Accepted: 2 August 2022 Published: 4 August 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 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/). plants Article Effect of Wheat Crop Nitrogen Fertilization Schedule on the Phenolic Content and Antioxidant Activity of Sprouts and Wheatgrass Obtained from Offspring Grains Beatrice Falcinelli 1 , Angelica Galieni 2, *, Giacomo Tosti 1 , Fabio Stagnari 3 , Flaviano Trasmundi 3 , Eleonora Oliva 3 , Annalisa Scroccarello 3 , Manuel Sergi 3 , Michele Del Carlo 3 and Paolo Benincasa 1 1 Dipartimento di Scienze Agrarie, Alimentari ed Ambientali, Università di Perugia, Borgo XX Giugno 74, 06121 Perugia, Italy 2 Research Centre for Vegetable and Ornamental Crops, Council for Agricultural Research and Economics—CREA, Via Salaria 1, 63077 Monsampolo del Tronto, Italy 3 Faculty of Bioscienceand Agro-Food and Environmental Technology, University of Teramo, Via Renato Balzarini 1, 64100 Teramo, Italy * Correspondence: angelica.galieni@crea.gov.it Abstract: This work was aimed at investigating the effects of rate and timing of nitrogen fertilization applied to a maternal wheat crop on phytochemical content and antioxidant activity of edible sprouts and wheatgrass obtained from offspring grains. We hypothesized that imbalance in N nutrition experienced by the mother plants translates into transgenerational responses on seedlings obtained from the offspring seeds. To this purpose, we sprouted grains of two bread wheat cultivars (Bologna and Bora) grown in the field under four N fertilization schedules: constantly well N fed with a total of 300 kg N ha −1 ; N fed only very early, i.e., one month after sowing, with 60 kg N ha −1 ; N fed only late, i.e., at initial shoot elongation, with 120 kg N ha −1 ; and unfertilized control. We measured percent germination, seedling growth, vegetation indices (by reflectance spectroscopy), the phytochemical content (total phenols, phenolic acids, carotenoids, chlorophylls), and the antioxidant activity (by gold nanoparticles photometric assay) of extracts in sprout and wheatgrass obtained from the harvested seeds. Our main finding is that grains obtained from crops subjected to late N deficiency produced wheatgrass with much higher phenolic content (as compared to the other N treatments), and this was observed in both cultivars. Thus, we conclude that late N deficiency is a stressing condition which elicits the production of phenols. This may help counterbalance the loss of income related to lower grain yield in crops subjected to such an imbalance in N nutrition. Keywords: bioactive compounds; carotenoid; chlorophyll; gold nanoparticles photometric assay; phenolic acid; seedling; spectroscopy; vegetation index 1. Introduction Sprouted seeds represent micro-scale vegetables harvested at the initial and very earliest growth stages, particularly appreciated for their high content of bioactive molecules. Among species exploited for sprouting purposes, cereals are particularly prone to edible sprouts and wheatgrass production. Both (especially wheatgrass) are characterized by a high content of secondary metabolites and antioxidants [1], which contribute to numerous beneficial properties for human health [2]; wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) grains represent the main source of basic nutrients, especially carbohydrates, for human nutrition, as well as contain secondary metabolites [3]. Although there are many techniques available to increase phytochemicals accumula- tion in cereal sprouts and wheatgrass during sprouting [4,5], some recent studies demon- strated that most of the phytochemical content found after sprouting is principally related to the initial phytochemical concentration in grains (i.e., seed lot, cultivars, etc.) [1,4], which Plants 2022, 11, 2042. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants11152042 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/plants