Transforming Distillers' Spent Grains into Novel Food Ingredients with Prebiotic and Antioxidant Characteristics.

USDA-AFRI Foundational Program Seed Grant Scope of Work Schendel, Adedeji, Barzee, Hamaker Title: Transforming Distillers’ Spent Grains into Novel Food Ingredients with Prebiotic and Antioxidant Characteristics. Sponsoring Agency: USDA-NIFA-AFRI: Novel Foods and Manufacturing Technologies program (A1364) Primary Investigator: Rachel Schendel, Department of Animal & Food Sciences, University of Kentucky Co-PI: Akinbode Adedeji, Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, University of Kentucky Co-PI: Tyler Barzee, Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, University of Kentucky Co-PI: Bruce Hamaker, Department of Food Sciences, Purdue University Distillers’ spent grains are a rich source of feruloylated arabinoxylans, a structural hemicellulose abundant in the cell walls of the cereal grains (corn, barley, rye, and wheat) utilized in bourbon production. In their native, unprocessed form, these feruloylated arabinoxylans are mostly large, water-insoluble polymers bound in the cell wall matrix, but processing treatments can both release these polymers from the cell wall matrix and break them into smaller, water-soluble polysaccharides and oligosaccharides. These compounds exhibit both prebiotic and antioxidant characteristics stemming from their carbohydrate and covalently-linked phenolic acid structural moieties. We propose that these compounds have tremendous potential as clean-label-friendly food ingredients. The overall goal of this project is to identify processes that will lead to conversion of distillers spent grain to value-added products with optimized functional properties (prebiotic and clean-label- friendly food antioxidant additives). The specific goals of this research are to: • Optimize the operating parameters of five food processing operations (milling, extrusion, ultrasonication, cold plasma, and enzyme treatment) for increasing the bioaccessibility of feruloylated arabinoxylans in distillers spent grains. • Quantify the release of feruloylated arabinoxylans from the spent grains following processing and characterize the structural changes in the feruloylated arabinoxylans following processing. • Assess the fermentation behavior and prebiotic characteristics of the processed material in the human microbiome • Assess the functionality of the processed material to limit lipid oxidation • Perform technoeconomic, feasibility, and environmental assessments of the developed food ingredients and additives.