Quality attributes of sweet potato flour as influenced by variety, pretreatment and drying method

The effect of pretreatment methods (soaking in water, potassium metabisulphite solution, and blanching) and drying methods (sun and oven) on some quality attributes of flour from ten varieties of sweet potato roots were investigated. The quality attributes determined were chemical composition and functional properties. Data obtained were subjected to descriptive statistics, multivariate analysis of variance, and Pearson's correlation. The range of values for properties of sweet potato flour were: moisture (8.06–12.86 ± 1.13%), starch (55.76–83.65 ± 6.82%), amylose (10.06–21.26 ± 3.92%), total sugar (22.39–125.46 ± 24.68 μg/mg), water absorption capacity (140–280 ± 26), water solubility (6.89–26.18 ± 3.80), swelling power (1.66–5.00 ± 0.50), peak viscosity (24.50–260.92 ± 52.61 RVU), trough (7.08–145.83 ± 34.48 RVU), breakdown viscosity (11.00–125.33 RVU), final viscosity (10.21–225.50 ± 60.55 RVU), setback viscosity (3.04–92.21 RVU), peak time (6.07–9.06 min) and pasting temperature (69.8–81.3°C). Variety had a significant (P 0.05) affect moisture, fat and lightness (L*). Drying method did not significantly (P > 0.05) affect fiber and L*. The interactive effect of variety, pretreatment and drying method had a significant (P < 0.001) effect on all the attributes except fat and fiber. Total sugar correlated significantly (P < 0.01) with water solubility (r = 0.88) of the flour samples. Variety was a dominant factor influencing attributes of sweet potato flour and so should be targeted at specific end uses

GMOs in animal agriculture: time to consider both costs and benefits in regulatory evaluations

In 2012, genetically engineered (GE) crops were grown by 17.3 million farmers on over 170 million hectares. Over 70% of harvested GE biomass is fed to food producing animals, making them the major consumers of GE crops for the past 15 plus years. Prior to commercialization, GE crops go through an extensive regulatory evaluation. Over one hundred regulatory submissions have shown compositional equivalence, and comparable levels of safety, between GE crops and their conventional counterparts. One component of regulatory compliance is whole GE food/feed animal feeding studies. Both regulatory studies and independent peer-reviewed studies have shown that GE crops can be safely used in animal feed, and rDNA fragments have never been detected in products (e.g. milk, meat, eggs) derived from animals that consumed GE feed. Despite the fact that the scientific weight of evidence from these hundreds of studies have not revealed unique risks associated with GE feed, some groups are calling for more animal feeding studies, including long-term rodent studies and studies in target livestock species for the approval of GE crops. It is an opportune time to review the results of such studies as have been done to date to evaluate the value of the additional information obtained. Requiring long-term and target animal feeding studies would sharply increase regulatory compliance costs and prolong the regulatory process associated with the commercialization of GE crops. Such costs may impede the development of feed crops with enhanced nutritional characteristics and durability, particularly in the local varieties in small and poor developing countries. More generally it is time for regulatory evaluations to more explicitly consider both the reasonable and unique risks and benefits associated with the use of both GE plants and animals in agricultural systems, and weigh them against those associated with existing systems, and those of regulatory inaction. This would represent a shift away from a GE evaluation process that currently focuses only on risk assessment and identifying ever diminishing marginal hazards, to a regulatory approach that more objectively evaluates and communicates the likely impact of approving a new GE plant or animal on agricultural production systems

A simple guide to understanding and applying the hazard analysis critical control point concept /

"Published under the auspices of the ILSI Europe Scientific Committee on Microbiology."Includes bibliographical references (p. 12)

Guía para la evaluación de riesgo ambiental de organismos genéticamente modificados

144 páginasEl propósito de la Guía es que ésta sea utilizada en el día a día, como una referencia rápida y objetiva para resolver las cuestiones que se plantean, permitiendo seguir caminos seguros y específicos para cada evento de transformación generado por la biotecnología moderna. Se compone de dos secciones: en la primera se explican todos los pasos de la evaluación de riesgo y su relación con los demás elementos de análisis de riesgos. En la segunda sección el lector tiene seis ejemplos concretos de aplicación del tutorial proporcionado por la guía. Aunque la misma sigue las directrices generales del Protocolo de Cartagena, mantiene un nivel de simplicidad y claridad sin precedentes y seguramente será una de las herramientas más útiles en la evaluación del riesgo ambiental de OGMs, tanto para principiantes como para los evaluadores más experimentados