Title: Adding value to food processing waste: innovative ways to incorporate fibre extracted from pomace into cerealbased foods
Funder: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Abstract: Description The project supports priorities on delivering innovation to ensure a competitive, resource-efficient UK food and drink sector, which is resilient to the challenges posed by food security and climate change. It addresses two priority R&D areas identified by the food and drink sector to achieve economic gain by reducing and adding value to waste in food processing and finding ways to integrate resource-efficient, sustainable food processing and optimising nutritional quality of foods. Technological innovations are needed post-harvest for adding value from food processing waste products to optimise efficiency with improved environmental outcomes. This project will analyse UK berry-processing by-products currently discarded as waste to produce fibre-rich ingredients suitable for incorporation into cereal-based foods. It will also take advantage of nutritional benefits that originate from fibre in the pomace to maximise nutritional quality that meets consumer needs. This work forms part of the European project “BERRYPOM”, funded under the European SUSFOOD ERANET Framework 7 programme with partners from Germany, Spain, Sweden and New Zealand. According to FAO (2013), 25 - 50% of food is discarded along the production and consumption chain. This work focuses on reducing residue devaluation along the processing chain, and to build strategies for value-added food ingredients processed from that waste.UK produces 130,000 tonnes/year of soft fruit, which creates an added-value opportunity to utilise the waste (pomace, 20-30%) to produce ingredients that improve the nutritional value of cereal-based foods. The UK part of this project focuses on blackcurrant pomace and on achieving bread quality that meets UK consumer needs. Pomace will be sourced from UK suppliers and the fibre fraction will be characterised. In collaboration with partners, methods for processing pomace will be investigated. Techno-functional properties of the fibre extracts will be determined, including chemical and physical properties in order to understand how the chemical composition and fine structure of fibres influence their function in dough systems and hence how this science can be applied to product reformulation. The functional performance of blackcurrant fibre extracts in bread systems will be investigated at the technological and scientific levels. Fibre damages gluten network thus reducing the acceptance of the final products. Pomace fibre will be incorporated into bread to determine formulation and processing conditions required to give acceptable bread quality. This part of the work will be undertaken collaboratively with the German partner, who will perform the baking and sensory trials with consumers. The UK part of the investigation will complement these with a focus on the effects of fibre on dough properties and structure. Further studies will elucidate the interactions between fibres, other dough components and aerated structure throughout the bread-making process, with rheological, microstructural and thermal analysis complemented with X-ray microtomography. This will facilitate effective incorporation of fibres to maximise technological functionality in terms of nutritional and quality characteristics of final products. The project delivers understanding of technological parameters that will help to fabricate value-added products. These parameters include molecular properties of fibers and how their structure affects technological functionality in model bread formulations.The project will provide technological innovation to enable the UK food industry to remain competitive by investigating innovative approaches and opportunities to use waste from blackcurrant processing adding value to food processing, reducing waste (providing environmental benefits) whilst also contribution to broader goals around producing quality , healthier foods which meet consumer needs. Novel food grade ingredients will be fabricated in order to obtain products rich in soluble and insoluble fibres that enhance the nutritional quality of bread with increased added value.The proposed work focuses on extraction of fibre from blackcurrant pomace, physicochemical characterisation of the extract and incorporation into bread formulations. In the literature we can find previously published work that has been performed on pomace from other sources such as apple, pear or grape in dough systems but not from berries (see for instance references 1 and 2 below). Although work is available showing the potential of pomace inclusion in bread dough to increase the fibre content it is limited to a rather simplistic or preliminary evaluation of the technological performance of pomace. The proposed work will address comprehensively the lack of fundamental and technological evidence of pomace industrial performance. As pomace characteristics vary with its botanical origin it is imperative to study its properties before we include them in real food systems. Our proposed approach will form the basis of an interpretation that can be extended to other pomace sources. This will be done by employing a combination of physical, chemical and engineering concepts (see section 2.3) that address the entire spectrum of technological and functional issues that are encountered during pomace handling and its use in foods. Objective Hypothesis: Blackcurrant pomace waste and by-products from food processing can be used to extract dietary fibres that can be incorporated in bread to improve quality.Aim of project: The overall aim is to reduce agricultural waste and help in the production of added value cereal products and in particular bread with increased fibre content. In order to achieve this aim, the project will be broken down into four major objectives.Objective 1: Literature review on extraction and utilization of pomace fibre in food productsObjective 2: Isolation and characterization of fiber.Objective 3: Functionality of berry pomace into model dough systemsObjective 4: Characterization of model dough systems containing berry pomace and fiber isolateThe successful completion of Objectives 3 and 4 depends on completion of Objective 2. Objective 1 is independent of the rest of the Objectives.


Research activity codes: 3.3 NUTRITION AND CHEMOPREVENTION
Health categories: ORAL AND GASTROINTESTINAL;CARDIOVASCULAR;STROKE;METABOLIC AND ENDOCRINE;CANCER AND NEOPLASMS