The Role of Corn Seed Hemicellulose for Cereal Fresh Preservation

The storage of corn seeds in the fresh state is very difficult. This reason is presumably ascribable to the unstability of hemicellulose constructing the cell membrane. The hemicellulose was composed of xylose, arabinose mainly, and smaller amounts of galacturonic acid, glucose and galactose. The mean molecular weight was about 730,000 by a gelfiltration method. The yield of the hemicellulose from corn seeds amounts to about 1.5%. It is hydrolyzed by an exo-enzyme of one strain of bacteria isolated from corn seed. The mode of the hydrolysis is that of an endo type. This bacterium is a native one, namely, utilizes preferably the hemicellulose as only carbon source for the growth. At 15℃ it can grow with difficulty in stab and plate culture, but at 5℃ it can not grow at all. This bacterium is quite resistant to heat treatment, since even after heating at 120℃ for 20 min., a significant number of bacteria appeared in the sterilized medium. The bacterium can grow within pH 6-10 range. Thus, we are expecting that corn seeds will be stored safely by controlling temperature and spraying of the acidic solution