U.S. flagAn official website of the United States government
                    Here's how you know **Official websites use .gov**
                            
                            A **.gov** website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
 **Secure .gov websites use HTTPS**
                            
                            A **lock** (                            
                              A locked padlock                                                      
                            
                            ) or **https://** means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Menu Agricultural Research Service
						
                    U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
 close



Research
                Research Home
                            National Programs
                            Research Projects
                            Scientific Manuscripts
                            International Engagement
                            Scientific Software/Models
                            Databases and Datasets
                            Office of Scientific Quality Review
            Media
                News & Features
                            Multimedia
                            Briefing Room
                            Down on the Farm
                            Press Room
                            Science in Your Shopping Cart
                            Scientific Discoveries
                            Tellus
                            Under the Microscope
            About ARS
                About ARS Home
                            Staff Directory
                            Labs and Research Centers (Map)
                            Headquarter Offices
                            Organizational Chart
                            Employee Services (REE Employees Only)
                            Office of Outreach, Diversity, and Equal Opportunity
            Work With Us
                Work With Us Home
                            ARS Vacancies at USAJOBS
                            Careers at ARS Information
                            Scientific Collaborations
                            Extramural Agreements
                            1890 Faculty Research Sabbatical ProgramSearch small
                    Search
            
            ARS Home
                                About ARS
                                Contact Us




ARS Home News & Events News Articles Research News 2020





- ARS@Work
- Blog
- Down on the Farm
- Image Gallery
- News Archive
- Podcasts
- Press Room
- Science in Your Shopping Cart
- Scientific Discoveries
- Tellus
- Under the Microscope
- YouTube Channel

Microbe with Taste for Stale Bread Finds Its Calling By Jan Suszkiw May 19, 2020 Researchers are enlisting mighty microbes in the fight against food waste. An Agricultural Research Service (ARS) team in Peoria, Illinois, has devised a procedure for using bacteria to convert glucose from bread waste into value-added products such as ascorbic acid (vitamin C), which is used in everything from food and beverages to pharmaceutical and personal-care products, a U.S market valued at over $1 billion in 2018. By one estimate, 12.5 million tons of bread, rolls, croissants and other baked goods go uneaten worldwide each year. Some of this food waste is fed to livestock as a source of carbohydrates and protein; however, the remainder can pose a disposal problem. Fortunately, the adage "One man's trash is another man's treasure" still holds true—with the help of *Pseudomonas reptilivora* bacteria. In studies at the ARS National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, team members Sirma Yegin (Ege University, Turkey), Badal Saha, Gregory Kennedy, Mark Berhow and Karl Vermillion devised fermentation procedures that encourage the species to gobble up glucose in bread waste and convert it into 2-keto-D-gluconic acid (2KGA). According to Saha, a research chemist with the center's Bioenergy Research Unit, 2KGA is a so-called "platform chemical" that helps synthesize bulk quantities of erythorbic acid, ascorbic acid, ascorbic acid salts, and other substances with wide-ranging food and industrial applications. 2KGA itself can also be used as a detergent builder, cement plasticizer and precursor chemical for herbicide compounds. The team's hope is that with continued research and scale-up, the glucose-hungry bacteria will offer a biobased alternative to synthetically producing valuable chemicals like vitamin C from 2KGA—and simultaneously help tackle a food-waste issue. Synthetic production methods for 2KGA are costly and dependent on harmful oxidizing agents among other drawbacks. There are also fermentation-based methods of producing 2KGA using other types of microbes. However, they require the addition of nitrogen, mineral salts and other costly nutrients, noted Badal. That's not the case with *P. reptilivora*, which does just fine on a diet of glucose-rich bread wastes (once it's been rendered into a slurry using distilled water and enzymes, that is). The advance, which the team reported in the March 2020 issue of *Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery**,* is part of the ARS center's overarching mission to develop new, value-added uses for agricultural commodities, especially if they can ease the reliance on raw materials made from fossil fuels. In this instance, the team's efforts began with the center's ARS Culture Collection, which houses tens of thousands of microbial specimens collected from around the world. Many of these microbial holdings are valued for their pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial, food and other applications, including *P. reptilivora*, which was originally added to the collection in the 1940s as strain NRRL B-6. Initially, the microbe was considered an unwelcome contaminant in fermentation procedures. Now, that same fondness for fermentation conditions could prove key to making substance that not only improve the quality and shelf-life of food, but also keep it out of the trash bin. *The Agricultural Research Service is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific in-house research agency. Daily, ARS focuses on solutions to agricultural problems affecting America. Each dollar invested in agricultural research results in $20 of economic impact.*


Return to top


Research
                            Media
                            About ARS
                            Work With Us


Connect with ARS Sign up


ARS Home
                            USDA.gov
                            Plain Writing
                            Policies & Links
                            Civil Rights Statements
                            FOIA
                            Accessibility Statement
                            Privacy Policy
                            Non-Discrimination Statement
                            Quality of Information
                            USA.gov
                            WhiteHouse.gov