Plant proteins have recently gained market demand and momentum due to their environmentally friendly origins and health advantages over their animal-derived counterparts. However, their lower techno-functionalities, digestibility, bioactivities, and anti-nutritional compounds have limited their application in foods. Increased demand for physically modified proteins with better techno-functionalities resulted in the application of different thermal and non-thermal treatments to modify plant proteins. Novel physical processing technologies (NPPT) considered 'emerging high-potential treatments for tomorrow' are required to alter protein functionality, enhance bioactive peptide formations, reduce anti-nutritional, reduce loss of nutrients, prevention of damage to heat liable proteins and clean label. NPPT can be promising substitutes for the lower energy-efficient and aggressive thermal treatments in plant protein modification. These facts captivated the interest of the scientific community in designing novel functional food systems. However, these improvements are not verifiable for all the plant proteins and depend immensely on the protein type and concentration, other environmental parameters (pH, ionic strength, temperature, and co-solutes), and NPPT conditions. This review addresses the most promising approaches of NPPT for the modification of techno-functionalities of plant proteins. New insights elaborating the effect of NPPTs on proteins' structural and functional behavior in relation to other food components are discussed. The combined application of NPPTs in the field of plant-based bioactive functionalities is also explored.
Keywords: Plant proteins; novel physical processing technologies; structural changes; techno-functionalities.