Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum Moench) is an important crop in some areas of the world. Buckwheat flour contains essential nutrients such as protein (Ikeda
et aI., 1991) and minerals (Ikeda and Yamashita, 1994) at
high levels. Thus buckwheat flour is an important dietary
source of such essential nutrients. On the other hand,
components in buckwheat flour have still not been well
characterized from the viewpoints of both nutrition and
functionality. Careful characterization ofthe components
is needed to better understand their nutritional and functional
properties.