UMAINE FOOD SCIENTISTS PRESENT RESEARCH FINDINGS AT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Contact: Joe Carr at (207) 581-3571
ORONO — Faculty members, staff members and students from the University of Maine Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition will make a total of nine presentations at the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, July 16-20. Topics will include food safety, product development and food and nutrition education.
The department works closely with Maine food companies to provide technical expertise and analytical services. Laboratory Manager Katherine Davis-Dentici and Russell Hazen of UMaine’s Advanced Manufacturing Center will present the results of a survey of Maine food processors, which has already resulted in the development of two regional shared-use facilities for small companies. Doctoral student and NSF K-12 Fellow Kristi Crowe, who has worked with local high school teachers to incorporate food chemistry experiments in their curricula through UMaine’s National Science Foundation GK-12 Fellow Program, will describe that experience and its impact on Maine students.
Maine’s wild blueberry industry sponsored three research papers at the conference. Crowe worked with professors Alfred Bushway and Rodney Bushway to evaluate environmentally-friendly alternatives to chlorine treatment for disinfecting berries. The master’s thesis research of Rebecca Potter was funded by a grant from the Mane Technology Institute to the Wild Blueberry Commission of Maine. Potter worked with Prof. Mary Ellen Camire and Research Associate Michael Dougherty to develop new wild blueberry soy beverages. Camire and Dougherty also worked with former student Yean Hoong Teh to create healthy ice cream-type desserts that combined wild blueberries, tofu and soymilk.
Two presentations will address problems of Maine’s seafood industry. Crab-picking techniques recover only a small percentage of edible meat. Doctoral student Shari Baxter and Prof. Denise Skonberg utilized various treatments to produce surimi from crab meat by-products. Extension Food Scientist Beth Calder worked with Skonberg and undergraduate student Lilly Lanyero to evaluate the chemical characteristics of extracted crab proteins tin order to better understand how they could be utilized in other foods.
Prof. Vivian Wu is studying natural compounds for their ability to control harmful bacteria in foods. Doctoral student Xujian Qiu, Alfred Bushway and Wu found that cranberry concentrate effectively prevented the growth of four types of pathogenic bacteria. Wu also collaborated with a Florida State researcher to prevent bacterial growth in ground beef through the addition of Cornus fruit extract, a product used in traditional Chinese medicine. She will make presentations on each of these projects.
Abstracts of these presentations can be found on the IFT web site (http://www.ift.org). Additional information about food science research at UM is available on the departments web site (http://www.fsn.umaine.edu).