Towards era of sustainable food resource

Agriculture and food feature prominently in debates about sustainability. Food and agriculture is a solid foundation for sustainability. Figure 1 shows a diagram of all elements in the foundation of food sustainability. This “donut” figure, lifted from Raworth (2012) describes the upper and lower bounda-ries of the safe and just place for humanity. If we focus on the outer circle, the “upper limits” of plan-etary capacity, agriculture and food systems play critical role – and may be primarily responsible for exceeding ceiling in Nitrogen, Climate Change and Biodiversity Loss. Sustainability and technological innovation in food production are critically needed to ensure worldwide food security and stability of the global economy. It highlights ethical practices and approaches to develop an environmentally har-monized food system for a secure and sustainable global food supply of the current production system that consumes precious resources like freshwater, land, energy, and environments to live and grow food

Use of Bioactivator mixture for the composting process of empty fruit bunch

The development of palm oil industry generates large numbers of empty fruit bunches (EFB) as a by-product. Commonly, palm oil industries discharge EFB to their plantation as mulching. However, this strategy requires a large space, a lot of labours, high costs for EFB distribution and it reduces soil fertility due to its oil content. An alternative method that can be applied for reducing EFB is by composting the EFB. However, the drawback of this approach is the long duration of this composting process. Hence the purpose of this study was to shorten the duration of the EFB composting by mixing EFB with some bioactivator consisting of agro-wastes such as palm oil mill effluent, Eucalyptus leaf litter and biosludge of pulp and paper (BPP). The composting of EFB used passive aeration method in the reactor bin with the composting duration for 90 days. During the composting process, physical changes such as colour, odour, texture and temperature were recorded every day. Chemical changes such as pH, moisture content, macronutrients, micronutrients, heavy metal contents and bacterial concentrations were analyzed for every ten days interval. Findings of this study showed that BPP was the best bioactivator in the composting of EFB. The optimization of EFB composting process was carried out by setting the EFB size and adjusting the initial moisture ratio. The best treatment combination was using SR6 which was EFB size of 1.5 cm with a mixture ratio of 60 % of EFB and 40 % of BPP. Finally, the resulted compost from treatment of SR6 was tested in the plantation study, and the best dose for enhancing the growth and yield of corn was using compost of 35 ton/ha. For future study, mechanical treatment and forced aeration method are suggested to be applied before starting the composting process. In addition, soil analysis and comparison between the application of organic and chemical fertilizers are suggested to be observed in order to know the effect of compost application

Effects of kappa carrageenan and glycerol in purple sweet potato starch based edible film

The solubility and mechanical properties of purple sweet potato (PSP) starch - based edible films are being investigated. The formulation was prepared using a constant amount of PSP starch (4 % w/v) with five different ratios of carrageenan and glycerol (1:1 , 1.5:0.5, 0.5:1.5, 0.5:0.5, 1:0) which act as gelling agent s and plasticizers respectively. PSP starch generates 61.79 mg/100 g anthocyanin and retains 16.78 % antioxidant capacity . Carrageenan and glycerol (0.5:1.5) ratio shows the highest solubility in water ( 53.50 ± 0.1085 % ) and highest tensile strength (9.1674 ± 0.5399 MPa) with the lowest elongation at break (20.436 ± 2.826 %)

Physicochemical properties of encapsulated purple sweet potato extract; effect of maltodextrin concentration, and microwave drying power

Purple sweet potato (PSP) is rich with anthocyanin and has a great potential as natural food colorant. In this study, investigation on the effect of maltodextrin (MD, DE 4.0–7.0) concentration as wall material and various microwave drying powers towards physicochemical properties of microwave assisted encapsulation of purple sweet potato extract (PSPE) has been conducted. The effects of microwave power (550W and 330W) and MD concentration (20%, 25%, and 30%) were analysed for moisture content, water activity, colour, and total monomeric anthocyanin content (TMA). Both moisture content and water activity of the encapsulated PSPE were significantly decreased (p <0.05) as the MD concentration increased at 20% and 30%. With respect of anthocyanin content, increasing of MD concentration at 20% and 30% showed a statistically significant reduction (p<0.05). PSPA with 20% concentration gave the highest TMA at both microwave drying power of 330W and 550W, with 385.93 ± 10.81mg/L and 419.28 ± 10.89mg/L respectively. However, moisture content, water activity, colour, and TMA were not significantly different with the changing of microwave drying power

Unravelling the potential of nitric acid as a surface modifier for improving the hemocompatibility of metallocene polyethylene for blood contacting devices

Design of blood compatible surfaces is obligatory to minimize platelet surface interactions and improve the thromboresistance of foreign surfaces when they are utilized as biomaterials particularly for blood contacting devices. Pure metallocene polyethylene (mPE) and nitric acid (HNO3) treated mPE antithrombogenicity and hydrophilicity were investigated. The contact angle of the mPE treated with HNO3 decreased. Surface of mPE and HNO3 treated mPE investigated with FTIR revealed no major changes in its functional groups. 3D Hirox digital microscopy, SEM and AFM images show increased porosity and surface roughness. Blood coagulation assays prothrombin time (PT) and activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT) were delayed significantly (P < 0:05) for HNO3 treated mPE. Hemolysis assay and platelet adhesion of the treated surface resulted in the lysis of red blood cells and platelet adherence, respectively indicating improved hemocompatibility of HNO3 treated mPE. To determine that HNO3 does not deteriorate elastic modulus of mPE, the elastic modulus of mPE and HNO3 treated mPE was compared and the result shows no significant difference. Hence, the overall observation suggests that the novel HNO3 treated mPE may hold great promises to be exploited for blood contacting devices like grafts, catheters, and etc

Effect of incorporating purple-fleshed sweet potato in biscuit on antioxidant content, antioxidant capacity and colour characteristics

Purple flesh sweet potato (PFSP) is considered to be a nutritionally rich crop. It also contain abundant amount of anthocyanin pigment which possess disease preventive properties. This work aims to study the effect of incorporating different form of processed PFSP, namely fresh, flour, and paste in biscuit formulation. Analysis was performed on the total phenolic, total anthocyanin content, antioxidant capacity, and colour characteristics. The analyses were made on samples, before and after the incorporation of PFSP in the biscuit. PFSP flour was prepared by directly using hot air-drying at 65ºC for 18 hours while PFSP paste was steamed for 30 minutes at 100ºC. The PFSP fresh contained total anthocyanincontent at 21.40 mg CyE/100 g fw, and the content increased when processed into the form of flour and paste approximately at 38.90 mg CyE/100 g fw and 52.48 mg CyE/100g fw, respectively. All forms of processed PFSP enhanced the purple colour when incorporated into the biscuit formulation. The experimental results showed that biscuit added with PFSP lost 15–36% of antioxidant capacity. Based on these findings, all forms of PFSP can be a natural colourant, a potential functional food ingredient, and can become a superior source for the production of foods with health benefits

Evaluation of chilling injury and internal browning condition on quality attributes, phenolic content, and antioxidant capacity during sub-optimal cold storage of Malaysian cultivar pineapples

Pineapple cold storage at sub-optimal temperature (4 ± 2 °C) and duration of storage (0, 7, 14, 21, and 28 days) was periodically tracked to investigate its effect on physical injuries known as chilling injury (CI) and internal browning (IB), which contribute to degradation of pineapple’s quality attributes (i.e., pH, total soluble solids (TSS) concentration, ascorbic acid (AA) content, ion leakage (EL), antioxidant capacity, and total phenolic content (TPC). In this study, three main Malaysian pineapple cultivars were evaluated based on the hypothesis that pineapple’s physical injuries (CI and IB) affect the quality attributes, phenolic content, and antioxidant capacity. Towards day 28 of sub-optimal cold storage treatment, cv. Morris (Queen) showed higher CI and IB incidences. However, the incidences were not statistically significant at a significance level of 0.05 in two other pineapple varieties cv. Josephine(hybrid, between ‘Johor’ Spanish and Smooth Cayenne) and cv. MD-2 or gold (the hybrid of Smooth Cayenne)), which exhibited resistance to CI and IB. Meanwhile, it was found that sub-optimal cold storage up to 28 days affects CI and IB of three main Malaysian pineapple cultivars regardless of their genetic capability towards these injuries. Further, the study revealed that CI and IB symptoms were correlated with a decrease in TSS and pH, and an increase in the percentage of EL, TPC, antioxidant capacity, and antioxidant activities measured by FRAP and DPPH, respectively. Meanwhile, in terms of overall quality attributes result with focus interaction of TPC and antioxidant capacity, cv. MD-2 was observed to be impacted the most during sub-optimal cold storage. The study concluded that CI and IB conditions were positively correlated with the degradation of quality attributes as reflected in TSS content, pH, EL, TPC content, and total antioxidant capacity

The effect of particle size of empty fruit bunch and ratio of biosludge of pulp and paper on biochemical changes in composting process

The abundance of empty fruit bunches (EFB) is a result of many palm oil industries increasing their crude palm oil production. Composting is a good, environmentally friendly alternative to overcome EFB. Two different ratios of EFB with biosludge of pulp and paper of 1 : 1 and 3 : 2, respectively, were used in this composting. The particle size of EFB was set into three different sizes of 0.5; 1.5 and 2.5 cm. The best treatment that was obtained from this study was SR4 where the EFB particle size was 1.5 cm, and the ratio between EFB and biosludge of pulp and paper was 3 : 2, respectively. The nitrogen value of SR4 increased from 1.41% to 2.71%, and C/N ratio decreased from 36.74 to 12.17 in 90 days. The population peak of bacteria of SR4 in the thermopilic phase achieved about 33.67 x 1010 cfu/g. These two treatment combinations had shown an increase in EFB composting efficiency

Retention of alpha tocopherol and antioxidant activity of encapsulated palm mixed vitamin E in formulated blends

Palm vitamin E containing mixture of tocopherol and tocotrienol was encapsulated using combined solution of maltodextrin and sodium caseinate by spray drying technique. The best formulation that fulfilled the requirement of high core retention with moderate antioxidant activity was found to be 24.5%(w/w) of vitamin E concentrate, 18.5% (w/w) of maltodextrin and 7%(w/w) of sodium caseinate. The corresponding core retention and antioxidant activity value were found to be 71.5% and 43%, respectively. More than 80% of encapsulated α‒tocopherol was stable over the whole range of temperature compared to non‒encapsulated α‒tocopherol. A first‒order kinetics model was determined in term of degradation of α‒tocopherol in non‒encapsulated vitamin E at temperature of 50ºC and 28ºC within 42days of storage. Degradation rate constants (k) were 2.8x10‒2 day‒1 and 3x10‒2 day‒1 for 28ºC and 50ºC, respectively. The half‒life determined were 25days at 28ºC and 23days at 50ºC of storage condition

Importance of glucose and pseudomonas in producing degradable plastics

In this study, bacteria, P. oleovorans, was studied for its ability to produce PHA with glucose, fructose and sucrose as carbon sources that was grown at 25°C. The functional groups of the extracted PHA granules were identified as C=O group by Fourier transform Iinfrared (FTIR) spectroscopy analysis. The drastic absorption band at approximately 1720 cm-1 indicates the stretching vibration of the C=O groups in the PHA polyester. The optimized production of PHA was done by RSM (Response Surface Method) through various growth parameters. The best condition of productivity range for glucose is 93.4419 g/L. In addition, the highest PHA production after optimization is 2.28236 g/L with a desirability of 0.986 g/L, meanwhile the highest amount of PHA produced from P. oleovorans was 2.30 g/L