Understanding the multi-scale structural changes in starch and its physicochemical properties during the processing of chickpea, navy bean, and yellow field pea seeds

•Autoclaving of pulse decreased crystallinity, Mw value, and degree of order of starch.•Double helix content was higher for autoclaved pulses than their native counterparts.•Lamellar repeat thickness of 9–10 nm was disappeared for starch from autoclaved seed.•Destruction of hydrogen bonds connecting adjacent helices occurred upon autoclaving. This study aimed to isolate starch from three types of untreated and autoclaved pulse seeds including chickpea, navy bean, and yellow field pea and to characterize their multi-scale structure and the associated physicochemical properties. Autoclaving of pulse seeds tended to significantly decrease the relative crystallinity, the Mw value, and degree of order of starch samples measured by X-ray diffraction, size exclusion chromatography, and FT-IR. Simultaneously, double helix content, and degree of double helix obtained from solid-state 13CNMR and FT-IR were relatively higher (P