Development and evaluation of freeze-dried milk powder with low-lactose content

This work aims to develop a freeze-dried milk powder with low lactose content and evaluate the percentage composition, microbiological analysis, and the soy lecithin and temperature effect on the solubility, dispersibility, and wettability of the final product. According to the results, treatments with and without hydrolysis showed significant differences in moisture (3.96% and 2.63%), ash (8.92% and 10.0%), lactose (1.57% and 61.46%), and glucose (33.79% and 0.81%) contents. In both treatments, no microbiological contaminant was observed. For high values of solubility, the most appropriate combination was lecithin 0.6% at 80 ºC, for dispersibility was lecithin 0.6% at 94 ºC, and for wettability was lecithin 0.65% at 90 ºC. Based on the results, freeze-dried milk powder with low lactose content can represent a new technologically and nutritionally viable product. This can be an alternative production process representing potential for marketing as a final product or used as base for the food preparation containing milk with low lactose content

Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated genetic transformation of the phytopathogenic fungus Penicillium digitatum * §

Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation (ATMT) system was assessed for conducting insertional mutagenesis in Penicillium digitatum, a major fungal pathogen infecting post-harvest citrus fruits. A transformation efficiency of up to 60 transformants per 106 conidia was achieved by this system. The integration of the hph gene into the fungal genome was verified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification and sequencing. These transformants tested were also shown to be mitotically stable. Southern blot analysis of 14 randomly selected transformants showed that the hph gene was randomly integrated as single copy into the fungal genome of P. digitatum. Thus, we conclude that ATMT of P. digitatum could be used as an alternatively practical genetic tool for conducting insertional mutagenesis in P. digitatum to study functional genomics