#What does whole grain really mean? European definition publishedthe most comprehensive definition of whole grain termed to date has been published this week in the journal Food and Nutrition Research.
The effort to create the definition which is intended to assist in the production and labeling of foods rich in whole grains was born of the HEALTHGRAIN EU project the largest project ever focusing on cereals and health;
and was led by a multi-disciplinary team from some of Europe's leading universities and food research institutes.
Historically there's been no complete legally endorsed definition of whole grain flour and products explains Jan-Willem van der Kamp corresponding author of the paper and Senior Officer of International Projects at TNO Food and Nutrition.
When you read'25%whole grain flour'on one product label; the same claim on a different label could mean something quite different nutritionally.
what constitutes whole grain in food products--from breads to pasta to breakfast cereals--regardless of where they originate adds van der Kamp.
Almost universally the term whole grain indicates inclusion of all three components of the cereal grain kernel--endosperm (this is the largest part of the grain
and provides mostly starch) germ (comprises only a small part of the grain; this is where sprouting begins) and bran (the grain's protective outer layer;
it is rich in dietary fiber. Variances however arise around the particular grains considered whole precise combination of the three components once processed
The need for developing a more comprehensive detailed whole grain definition was identified during the course of the HEALTHGRAIN EU project an initiative intended to increase the use of whole grains and their health protecting constituents in food products for improved nutrition and health benefits.
and harvested in the same agricultural year such as wheat or barley.''We found that the impacts of organic farms on species richness were pronounced more
#Greenhouse time machine sheds light on corn domesticationby simulating the environment when corn was exploited first by people
and then domesticated Smithsonian scientists discovered that corn's ancestor a wild grass called teosinte may have looked very different then than it does today.
The fact that it looks more like corn under these conditions may help to explain how teosinte came to be selected by early farmers who turned it into one of the most important staple crops in the world.
The vegetative and flowering structures of modern teosinte are very different from those of corn.
These and other differences led to a century-long dispute as to whether teosinte could really be the ancestor of corn.
We grew teosinte in the conditions that it encountered 10000 years ago during the early Holocene period:
Intriguingly the teosinte plants grown under past conditions exhibit characteristics more like corn: a single main stem topped by a single tassel a few very short branches tipped by female ears and synchronous seed maturation.
This research demonstrates that the current Bt proteins used in corn and cotton crops globally do not harm Geocoris punctipes
or Orius insidious two important insect predators that help suppress pest populations on corn cotton
and the United states on genetically modified (GM) rice cotton and maize have concluded that the biodiversity of insects
Scientists at Rice are working on that too. They suggest that the extraction of electrons generated by surface plasmons in metal nanoparticles may be optimized.
Rice researchers led by chemist Stephan Link and graduate student Anneli Hoggard are endeavoring to understand the physics;
In one practical example demonstrated at Rice plasmon excitation in gold nanoparticles produces heat that instantly turns even ice-cold water into steam.
The Rice researchers found graphene broadened the nanorods'surface plasmon response --and shortened its lifetime--by accepting hot electrons.
The Rice lab hopes to optimize the connection between the nanoparticles and graphene or another substrate preferentially a semiconductor that will allow them to trap hot electrons.
The paper's co-authors are Rice graduate students Lin-Yung Wang Lulu Ma and Jana Olson;
research scientist Wei-Shun Chang and Pulickel Ajayan the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Mechanical engineering and Materials Science and of chemistry and chair of Rice's Department of Materials
and approaches that lead to improved outcomes are said unavailable Dr. Elizabeth Molyneux a pediatrician at QECH who co-authored the report with colleagues from Rice QECH Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Malawi.
and thanks to the partnership of QECH Rice and the Malawi Ministry of Health we are already implementing bubble CPAP nationwide.
In 2010 a team of Rice bioengineering students invented a low-cost bubble CPAP device. The technology which costs about 15 times less than conventional CPAP machines was created as part the Rice 360â°:
°Institute for Global Health Technologies'award-winning hands-on engineering education program Beyond Traditional Borders (BTB.
when CPAP was introduced first here said Rice's Rebecca Richards-Kortum the Stanley C. Moore Professor and chair of the Department of Bioengineering and director of both BTB and Rice 360â°.
Based on the dramatic results from the study QECH Rice 360â°and the Malawi Ministry of Health have partnered to provide bubble CPAP at all 27 of the country's government hospitals.
Richards-Kortum and Maria Oden director of Rice's Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) founded the hands-on BTB engineering education program in 2006.
BTB sends about a dozen Rice students overseas each summer to work with partners and test design prototypes--like bubble CPAP in 2010--that Rice students have created throughout the school year at the OEDK QECH has hosted BTB students each summer
since 2006 and Richards-Kortum and Oden raised $375000 in donations this year for the Day One Project an ambitious effort to expand QECH's neonatal facilities
Through the Day One Project Rice 360â°and QECH hope to create a collection of low-cost neonatal technologies that an African district hospital serving 250000 people can implement for about $5000.
#Better sweet corn research, better productionwhile grain yield is economically important in field corn production there are other metrics more important in sweet corn grown for processing said Marty Williams a USDA-ARS ecologist and University
whether the crop yield responses that have been reported previously in sweet corn research are actually helpful to the industry.
After collecting and studying sweet corn data representing 31 hybrids across 22 locations in Illinois over an 8-year period Williams said he sees a disconnect in
In other words Williams said researchers need to start speaking the same language as the sweet corn industry.
However he added that nearly all historic and recent field research in processing sweet corn reports neither of these variables regardless of
whether the studies pertained to plant pathology fertility management pest control or sweet corn breeding and genetics.
Ear number or green-ear mass are often the only crop responses reported in research on field productivity of processing sweet corn.
Essentially the more a measured yield response physically resembled a case of sweet corn the more precise and accurate the estimate of case production he reported.
or do we invest in an approach that gives the sweet corn industry exactly what it needs to make use of our research?
when sweet corn is harvested usually by hand for research. Though field corn for grain production is harvested at physiological maturity sweet corn is harvested at the R3 stage (milk stage)
while kernel moisture is at approximately 72 to 76 percent. When sweet corn is ripe waiting is not an option Williams explained.
A change in the way sweet corn research is done will have an impact on how processors growers
and seed companies make decisions in the future according to the researcher. Applied research aimed at improving crop productivity is predicated on the ability to accurately measure important crop responses such as yield.
For processing sweet corn the most important responses include recovery and case production he said. Those of us in the research community can't expect the sweet corn industry to adopt our research-based findings
when we're failing to measure what's truly important. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by University of Illinois College of Agricultural Consumer and Environmental sciences.
Greater confusion was associated indirectly with backlash against nutritional advice in general as indicated by agreement with statements such as Dietary recommendations should be taken with a grain of salt
and livestock including rice maize soybean potato pigeonpea pig and sheep. BGI is continuing to make more progress for facing the challenges on food shortage
Frozen lingonberries on cereal or in a smoothie are considerably better. If anyone wonders--yes we now eat lingonberries on a regular basis!
No bigger than a grain of rice the horse-chestnut leaf-mining moth has spread rapidly through England and Wales since its arrival in London in 2002.
Most people they drive past corn and soybean fields in Illinois and they say there's no way there's value for wildlife in those Vanbeek said.
The device created by Rice engineer and laser pioneer Frank Tittel and his group uses a thumbnail-sized quantum cascade laser (QCL) as well as tuning forks that cost no more than a dime to detect very small amounts of nitrous oxide and methane.
The technique called quartz-enhanced photoacoustic absorption spectroscopy (QEPAS) invented at Rice by Tittel Professor Robert Curl
The Rice team's device was detailed this month in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Analyst.
and are said very cheap Rice postdoctoral researcher and co-lead author Wei Ren. The fundamental theory behind this is the photoacoustic effect.
To field test the device the Rice team installed it on a mobile laboratory used during NASA's DISCOVER-AQ campaign which analyzed pollution on the ground and from the air last September.
Results from DISCOVER-AQ were discussed in a meeting of air quality scientists at Rice in January.
Rice postdoctoral researcher Mohammad Jahjah is co-lead author of the paper. Co-authors include Rice graduate student Wenzhe Jiang and former Rice Laser Science Group members Przemystaw Stefanski Rafat Lewicki Jiawei Zhang and Jan Tarka.
Tittel is the J. S. Abercrombie Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a professor of bioengineering.
and during fast heating shows that not only the grain growth is triggered by the phase transition but also the phase transition is accelerated additionally by the grain growth.
The HZB physicists have developed a model which can explain these findings. By means of numerical model calculations they demonstrated the accordance of the model with the measured data.
The tested their model by studying wheat and maize production in South africa. Under the direction of faculty members Michael Oppenheimer and David Wilcove both from the Wilson School's Program in Science Technology and Policy and with the help of visiting student research collaborator Lydie-Line
Paroz from ETH Zurich and colleagues from several other institutions Estes studied South africa an area projected to be vulnerable to climate change where wheat
or might be farmed for maize and wheat. They created a land-use model based on an area's potential crop output
To investigate any climate-change impacts the team then examined the production of wheat and maize under 36 different climate-response scenarios.
and it's widely thought there was not a lot of Vitamin d in their mainly cereal-based diet.
The importance of a season of regular rainthe effect of rainfall change on cotton yield also differs from that of crops such as maize sorghum and millet.
and the buckyball discovered at Rice in 1985. The scientists led by Rice physicists Yajing Li
and Douglas Natelson found that it's possible to soften the bonds between atoms by applying a voltage and running an electric current through a single buckyball.
The Rice experiment found the vibrations in all the bonds dropped ever so slightly in frequency to compensate.
The discovery of buckyballs which earned a Nobel prize for two Rice professors kick-started the nanotechnology revolution.
Rice graduate student Yajing Li is lead author of the paper. Co-authors are Peter Doak of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory;
and astronomy and of electrical and computer engineering at Rice. The Robert A. Welch Foundation the Department of energy the Israel Science Foundation and the Lise Meitner Center for Computational Chemistry supported the work.
Researchers have found ways to verify through genetic testing the authenticity of many other crops including cereals fruits olives tea
and cereals including wheat barley and/or rye--and sometimes grape wine imported from southern or Central europe.
which limited ingredients of beer to barley hops and water was enacted in Bavaria in 1516
It's made from barley honey juniper and other herbs like those in the ancient version.
#Ramularia and the 4 Rsthe gene that has provided spring barley with resistance to powdery mildew for over 30 years increases susceptibility to newly-important disease Ramularia leaf spot.
Since 1980 the mlo gene has transformed mildew from the most important disease of barley to an occasional nuisance in wetter areas of the UK.
Its effect on increasing the severity of Ramularia is most keenly felt in spring barley
However the research also paves the way for barley lines to be bred that are resistant to both diseases by selecting for multiple genes.
Barley is the fourth most important cereal in terms of global production across temperate regions. Story Source:
They make cattle more efficient at converting grain to muscle. They also improve the efficiency of converting an animal carcass into sellable meat.
#More to biofuel production than yieldwhen it comes to biofuels corn leads the all-important category of biomass yield.
corn switchgrass and mixes of native prairie grasses and flowering plants. They measured the diversity of plants pest
However rising corn and other commodity prices tempt farmers to till and plant as much of their available land as possible.
Yes corn prices are currently attractive to farmers but with the exception of biomass yield all other services were greater in the perennial grass crops Landis said.
and Central asia but the scientists say the mechanism they have found also exists in crops such as barley corn rice and wheat.
If you are a farmer in the field then you don't want your wheat to stop growing
or barley adapting soil management and adjusting the organisation of agricultural land i e . which crops are grown best in which place.
corn kale and other crops. Now a new study appearing in Annals of the Entomological Society of America called Effect of Egg Rearing Temperature and Storage Time on the Biological Characteristics of the Predatory Stink Bug Podisus
From the laboratories at the Institute of Food engineering for Development the team has worked with almonds oats
Until recently, the 130-year-old distillery had fed its spent barley (draff), which is grown locally, to the island's cattle.
Applying organic sensibilities to commercial agriculturemy husband swears that New jersey corn--harvested in August and shucked and eaten as quickly as possible off the stalk--is the sweetest that money can buy.
I don't know how much of that corn is grown organically here in the chemical-happy Garden state,
Sweet corn. New jersey Dept of agriculture
Are trees the most important green infrastructure in cities? An urban forest might seem like an oxymoron.
and orchards that grow rice, peaches, corn, strawberries, tomatoes, oranges, coffee and other produce. Now they have their eyes on Europe.
In response to the European union's regulations to boost more sustainable methods of pest control, the company is starting a big westward push of their product.
Corn is the one thing I d like to grow that we can t now because it requires something deeper.
oats, fruit. In every country in which we operate we have to be local. We're always finding ways to build sustainability into the agriculture in countries in
then added different versions of starch, obtained from corn or tapioca. As they tweaked the quality and quantity of added starch,
For its togo orders, Poste uses biodegradable corn-based utensils, containers and straws from Bio-Plus Earth.
the Federal Treasury would pay oil companies at least $31 billion to use 69 billion gallons of corn ethanol that the Federal Renewable Fuels Standard already requires them to use.
how good corn-based ethanol is for the environment, cars, and food prices is highly questionable.
Just Tuesday, the U s. Geological Survey released a report saying government programs encouraging biofuel production caused corn acreage in the Mississippi Delta to grow 288 percent in 2007,
With corn requiring more water and fertilizer than cotton, the crop shift, they say, is affecting water levels and quality in northwestern Mississippi.
Corn ethanol cost taxpayers $17 billion from 2005 to 2009, his group estimates. This is another industry that's entirely a creature of the government,
even more so than corn growing per se, Cook said. The production of ethanol wouldn't happen at all without government subsidies and protection.
Ethanol industry hits speed bump Can grasses replace corn as ethanol crop of choice? Ethanol in gas:
Unlike annual crops, perennial grain crops don't need to be planted every year, thus reducing the amount of fertilizer and lessening soil erosion.
The perennial wheat breeding programs will mature, but the speed depends on how it's funded.
the recently established director-general of the United nations'Food and Agriculture Organisation, believes that the U s. is causing a rise in the global price of grain.
centralized, monoculture status quo where all the grain comes from the Midwest, and over half the hogs from just four states to a new topography of distributed, diversified food production, we have to start supporting local food now.
it's cereals from Asia, with rice accounting for the majority of the waste--about 150 million tonnes.
Why does all this rice go to waste? Poor processing, transportation or storage result in rice being spilled
or spoiled before getting to consumers. Some waste also happens on the consumer side as people simply throw uneaten rice away.
The UN estimates that 80 kilograms of cereals, mostly rice, are wasted per person in the region every year.
It's a problem that will only get worse (unless steps are taken) as the region's urban population surges.
Read the full report. Photo: Flickr/sporkist
The world's tallest tower: The Tokyo Sky Treethe completion of the world's tallest tower, the Tokyo Sky Tree, Japan, was celebrated in an elaborate ceremony on Friday.
Most of the soybeans, corn, papaya, and sugar beet currently sold in the U s. are GMO,
Monsanto's sweet corn is set to hit the market this fall. Carter assures consumers that his anti-browning engineering only applies to browning from exposure,
Furthermore, what's important is that you can process all kinds of available biomass--wood chips, switch grass, corn stover, rice husks, wheat straw ââ Â,
Jimmy red corn and chioggia beets grew up Brock's arms, maize with corn smut covered Stupak's side,
and adopted Native american crops such as corn and squash. Slaves from West Africa introduced okra, cowpeas and benne and also served as the cooks for plantation kitchens.
The main cash crop was Carolina Gold rice a long-grained variety with a nutty flavor that probably originated in Indonesia
delivering a blow to the rice economy. In the early 20th century, cheaper rice from the American Southwest priced Carolina Gold out of the market.
The quality of other Lowcountry crops deteriorated as growers prioritized disease resistance and transportability over flavor.
whose mother had grown up eating Carolina Gold rice. His convoluted career path touched upon classical music,
Starting with a nearly extinct variety of corn, he has spent close to two decades obsessively hunting down seeds in the wild
and in grain banks and working with geneticists for purity. His company Anson Mills, now grows more than 300 exceptional products,
including Carolina Gold rice. Roberts'products have inspired a new generation of Lowcountry chefs to rediscover
Early Tuesday morning, some of the Cook It Raw chefs tried their hand at harvesting rice, following Roberts through a field of shoulder-high Carolina Gold.
Half the group cut the rice with hand sickles the rest used their bare hands.
Shewry said he'd never again let rice go to waste. Realizing how damn hard it is to do that work gave me a new appreciation for it.
He had found inspiration right away in the Carolina Gold rice, which he decided to use in pudding.
they combined every element in the crop rotation necessary to grow Carolina Gold rice--all except the rice itself.
which Barber presented as nose to tail eating of a grain, contained more than two dozen ingredients,
including Carolina peas, raw peanuts, benne, barley and camelina, a microscopic oil seed from antiquity.
a process the company says is more effective and cheaper than extracting sugar from corn or sugarcane.
Chang'r/Flickr Via Grist
Urban beekeeping keeps cities healthywe need bees for the future of our cities and urban living,
the project could reach full scale by March with the first produce reaching market by the end of the summer. h/t Grist Photo:
Wheat used in bread dough, pasta and pastries is milled freshly onsite (a healthier alternative to store-bought wheat products),
and butter and yoghurt are made fresh from organic milk and cream delivered from a local dairy farm.
say, major wheat production centers with concentrations of Russian wheat aphids, a crop pest. The idea behind the Internet-based, bilingual maps, collectively called Agroatlas, is to promote world food security--with specific attention to nations who were a part of the former Soviet union.
He specializes in it--he can make a noodle out of any grain. Normally, with soba noodles when you put them in the soup they expand,
but good English that the mark of a quality soba is that it brings out the true flavor of the buckwheat
and is balanced (the buckwheat to water ratio). The Japanese chef explains that soba-making is a challenge.
Because there is no gluten in buckwheat, the soba must absorb the moisture equally and then be kneaded in the shape of a chrysanthemum flower--the most challenging part of the process.
He explains that American wheat mills spin too fast which means that that a lot of valuable nutrients are lost.
He has built special stone mills that slowly process the buckwheat to preserve all their goodness.
Kotani says that his specialization is in gluten-free buckwheat noodles--a fast-growing dietary requirement.
For over three decades, the chemical has been hailed as safe and incredibly beneficial to the production of corn, soybean, and cotton.
and has made since billions of dollars from Roundup and â Ëoeroundup Ready'corn, soybeans, and cotton genetically engineered to survive dousings of glyphosate.
Corn ethanol offers a fine example of the problem. More than $20 billion in subsidies over the past three decades have turned ultimately nearly 40 percent of the U s. corn crop into less than 10 percent of the country's fuel needs by volume,
and less than 7 percent by energy content. In 2009 the U s. taxpayer subsidized 75 percent of the price of each gallon of gasoline replaced with ethanol.
Careful observers who did the math on the EROI of corn ethanol knew it would run into cost
In the pithy observation of veteran energy analyst Robert Hirsch six years ago, making ethanol from corn is a process in
thin enough to be swamped by the volatility of both corn and oil prices, as indeed it was in recent years.
we should now see the real costs of producing corn ethanol begin to be priced in to the cost of gasoline.
Without subsidies, the ROI of corn ethanol must begin to converge upon its EROI. The EROI tipping point A small cadre of academic researchers have calculated the EROI of various fuels
it is an important step in the long-term strategy to find a solution to provide affordable access to safe water for All the Swach's filter uses a combination of paddy husk ash and silver particles to kill 80
India produces 20 million tons of paddy husk ash each year as a byproduct of rice milling.
including corn, chile and beans, as well as seeds, herbs and flowers. Meats that are considered pre-Hispanic include venison, duck, boar, armadillo or a squirrel-like rodent called tepezcuintle.
or more times more fuel per acre than the corn that is used to make ethanol,
which avoids competing with food production, unlike the corn and soybeans that coat much of the Midwest's farmland.
 In particular, the high-fiber waste containing spent grains--barley malt and maize grits--an easily available,
After experimenting with various ratios of grain to brick raw material, the team found the best compromise between Šhighest mechanical bending strength  and Šlowest thermal conductivity.
Taking cues from the existing grain elevators on the site and the natural hexagonal shape of honeycombs
and wheat or rice straw. The company makes a point of noting that these are plants that are used not typically in food production,
Our new line of supermarket food and meat trays proves that there is now a viable alternative that's not made from corn, trees or plastic,
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011