Project Number: 1935-41000-068-00
Project Type: Appropriated

Start Date: Jul 01, 2004
End Date: Jun 30, 2009

Objective:
The overall objective is to create more demand for the processing residues from sugar beets and citrus fruits by developing new valuable products and processes for their efficient and sustainable conversion into high quality food and non-food products.

Approach:
(1)Prepare and evaluate new enzyme systems as tools to better understand and manipulate plant cell wall polysaccharide structure and function. 2) Extract by chemical and/or enzymatic means, isolate and characterize cell wall polysaccharides to determine molecular structure and physical properties in by-products of sugar beet and citrus processing for potential value added products. 3) Design new, value-added personal care, biomedical and industrial products from cell wall polysaccharides in by-products of sugar beet and citrus processing. 4) Develop novel, value added biodegradable engineering materials by utilizing state-of-the-art extrusion processing. 5) Produce new prebiotic functional food and animal feed ingredients from citrus and sugar beet processing by-products.