Food Science Commons^™

Characterization Of The Gut Microbiota And Colitogenic Bacterial Species In Core 1 O-Glycans Deficient Mice, Maria E. Perez-Munoz

Department of Food Science and Technology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Mucus is one important component of the intestinal mucosal barrier, and loss of its functionality is associated with colitis in humans and mice. Mice deficient in core 1 O-glycans (TM-IEC C1galt1^-/-) display a thinner mucus layer upon mutation of the glycosyltransferase enzyme (C1GALT1) responsible for core 1 O-glycans attachment, thus constituting an experimental model for human Ulcerative Colitis (UC). Under conventional conditions, these mice experience spontaneous inflammation of the colon. However, the exact role of the microbiota in colitis development in these mice has not been systematically investigated.

Aimed to gain insights into the role of …

Estudios Científicos En El Estado De Hidalgo Y Zonas Aledañas, Volumen Ii, Griselda Pulido-Flores, Scott Monks

Zea E-Books Collection

Los 16 capítulos que conforman este libro son una contribución al conocimiento de la biodiversidad y conservación de los recursos naturales en el estado de Hidalgo, México.

Se aborda el derecho de propiedad intelectual en la biodiversidad, citando algunos ejemplos de México. Así mismo, se presenta un estudio de la biodiversidad y distribución de la herpetofauna en cuatro tipos de vegetación. Desde el punto de vista de la helmintología se presentan dos estudios de los helmintos parásitos de vertebrados silvestres; con nuevos registros de hospederos y localidades de algunas especies de helmintos para Hidalgo. También, se aborda el uso de …

Cited For More Than 60 Years Of Flavor Research, Dennis O’Brien

Agricultural Research Magazine

It’s a unique scientific niche that touches the lives of everyone.

Flavor chemistry is one of several areas of research conducted at the Agricultural Research Service’s Western Regional Research Center (WRRC) in Albany, California. The WRRC’s achievements in flavor chemistry have earned it the distinction of being named a 2013 National Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society (ACS). The ACS is the world’s largest society of chemists, and its prestigious National Historic Chemical Landmarks program grants landmark status to seminal achievements in the history of chemical science in the United States that have had a significant impact on …

Providing More—And Better—Food By 2050, John W. Finley

Agricultural Research Magazine

The world in 2050 is predicted to have 9 billion people, who will differ in almost every way but one: They will all need to eat on a daily basis.

Their nutritional needs will be similar, too. Nutrition means eating, eating means food, and food means agriculture. Many people speak of the increased food needed for 9 billion, but in reality, the increased need is for nutrition. Thus, the world of 2050 will force a melding of two disciplines that have diverged in recent years—agriculture and nutrition.

We need to change our focus. We need sustainable nutrition as much as …

May/June 2013- Locations Featured In This Magazine Issue

Agricultural Research Magazine

The Agricultural Research Service has about 100 labs all over the country.

Locations Featured in This Magazine Issue

Albany, California 9 research units ■ 230 employees

Pullman, Washington 6 research units ■ 136 employees

Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Unit, Aberdeen, Idaho 1 research unit ■ 57 employees

U.S. Sheep Experiment Station, Dubois, Idaho 1 research unit ■ 10 employees

Roman L. Hruska U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, Clay Center, Nebraska 6 research units ■ 117 employees

Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center, Grand Forks, North Dakota 2 research units ■ 51 employees

Children’s Nutrition Research Center, Houston, Texas …

Agricultural Research Magazine, May-June 2013

Agricultural Research Magazine

Table of Contents

4 Olives! Scientists Take a New Look at an Ancient Crop

8 Getting Hooked on Farmed Salmon: A Good Source of Omega-3s

10 Nematode-Filled Capsules Tested Against Corn Rootworms

12 Viral Infection in Sheep Linked to Gene

14 Cited for More Than 60 Years of Flavor Research

17 Dogs, Pine Trees, and Carbs: Studies Lead to New Pet- Food Ingredient

18 Nourishing America’s Preemies: Scientists Confront the Challenges of IV Feeding

20 Mapping the Way to Even Healthier Rice

22 New Bioenergy Yeast Is an Overachiever

23 Locations Featured in This Magazine Issue

Olives! Scientists Take A New Look At An Ancient Crop, Talwinder S. Kahlon, Jiann-Tsyh Lin, Rebecca R. Milczarek, Mendel Friedman, Marcia Wood

Agricultural Research Magazine

Though the price makes you wince, you might just buy that bottle of your favorite olive oil anyway. Perhaps it’s exactly what you want for the salad dressing you’re making tonight and for your special stir-fry on the weekend. But are you really getting what you paid for?

A bottle proclaiming that it is olive oil might actually include another, lessexpensive vegetable oil derived from, for example, safflower or canola. Mislabeling is of concern not just to shoppers, retailers, and chefs, but also to America’s olive growers, olive oil processors, and more—especially those newly entering the U.S. olive oil market. …

Mapping The Way To Even Healthier Rice, Shannon Pinson, Jan Suszkiw

Agricultural Research Magazine

With the aid of high-tech tools, Agricultural Research Service and collaborating scientists are closing in on the genes in rice that regulate the uptake and storage of important minerals—a pursuit that could bolster the nutritional value of this cereal grain crop as a staple food for roughly half the world’s population.

Ultimately, the team envisions biofortifying rice using traditional plant breeding methods to develop new varieties whose kernels (grain) boast exceptionally high concentrations of essential minerals, including zinc, iron, and calcium.

Rice is a mainstay of the human diet for good reason. It is a rich source of energy, free …

Nematode-Filled Capsules Tested Against Corn Rootworms, Jan Suszkiw

Agricultural Research Magazine

Each spring, the western corn rootworm (Diabrotica virgifera) awakens from its winter slumber to wreak havoc on corn crops across the United States. The pest emerges in larval form, hatching from small white eggs deposited beneath the soil and causing significant feeding damage to the grain crop’s roots. The toll on U.S. farmers: an estimated $1-2 billion annually in yield losses and chemical control.

European growers face a similar threat from the pest, which was first reported in a corn field near the Belgrade international airport in Serbia (formerly Yugoslavia) in 1992, but is presumed to have arrived …

Getting Hooked On Farmed Salmon: A Good Source Of Omega-3s, Susan Raatz, Matthew Picklo, William Wolters, Rosalie Marion Bliss

Agricultural Research Magazine

Nearly 85 percent of seafood enjoyed by U.S. consumers is imported, and almost half of that is farm raised through a process called “aquaculture,” according to the National Aquaculture Association, based in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. In 2011, the United States imported $16.6 billion of seafood and exported $5.4 billion, a difference of $11.2 billion.

As the world’s population grows and demand for seafood increases, many seafood species are overfished or fully exploited. That means the world’s oceans cannot turn out more fish than are currently being produced. As the ceiling is being reached on seafood availability from the wild, U.S. …

New Bioenergy Yeast Is An Overachiever, Zonglin Lewis Liu, Ann Perry

Agricultural Research Magazine

There's a lot that can be done with a corn cob after the kernels have been removed. Farmers leave the cobs on the field to boost soil quality. Enterprising cooks use the cobs to make jelly. In China, the sugar xylose is extracted from the cob for industrial uses.

Liu worked with technician Scott Weber and supervisory microbiologist Michael Cotta on this project. All three researchers are in the Bioenergy Research Unit at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, Illinois.

The team started the project with a strain of yeast that had been identified in earlier studies …

Dogs, Pine Trees, And Carbs, Neil P.J. Price, Marcia Wood

Agricultural Research Magazine

Carbohydrates from a perhaps surprising source—pine trees—may have beneficial effects on dogs’ digestive-system health, according to collaborative studies by Agricultural Research Service, university, and corporate scientists.

The carbs, predominantly a group known as “GGMOs”—short for galactoglucomannan oligosaccharides—are a key ingredient in Previda, an all-natural dietary ingredient marketed to makers of pet food, aquaculture feed, and other animal-nutrition products.

ARS chemist Neil P.J. Price began his studies of these fiber-rich carbs in 2007, working under the auspices of a cooperative agreement with Temple-Inland, a Texas-based producer of lumber, fiberboard, and other wood products made from loblolly, longleaf, and other kinds of …

Nourishing America’S Preemies Scientists Confront The Challenges Of Iv Feeding, Douglas G. Burrin, Marcia Wood

Agricultural Research Magazine

Each year, more than a half-million infants are born prematurely in the United States. Many of these preemies, particularly those whose tiny digestive systems are simply too underdeveloped to handle mother’s milk or infant formula, may need to be nourished exclusively via intravenous feeding, known as “total parenteral nutrition,” or TPN.

TPN solutions, usually administered at the hospital for anywhere from a few days to a month or more, provide essential nutrients broken down into a very basic form. This liquid is gently and continuously infused into the infant’s bloodstream, completely bypassing the digestive tract.

“TPN helps save the lives …

Viral Infection In Sheep Linked To Gene, Michael P. Heaton, Kreg A. Leymaster, Sandra Avant

Agricultural Research Magazine

The discovery of a gene associated with a persistent viral infection that causes an incurable disease—ovine progressive pneumonia (OPP)—in sheep has led to the development of a genetic test that can be used to help reduce the impact of the disease.

A slow-acting, wasting disease, OPP affects millions of sheep worldwide and is one of the most costly diseases to producers in North America. Previous research revealed that 36 percent of sheep operations and 24 percent of sheep tested in the United States were infected with ovine progressive pneumonia virus (OPPV)—lentivirus strains that target the immune system and cause OPP. …

Risk Assessment Of Trace And Undeclared Allergens In Processed Foods, Benjamin C. Remington

Department of Food Science and Technology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Minimal eliciting doses for objective allergic reactions were found for 13 priority allergens and over 1800 individuals from published clinical literature or unpublished clinical data. Allergic populations did not vary when analyzed by age or geographic region. Results of this study show there are sufficient clinical data from food allergic individuals to use for risk assessment purposes for several allergenic foods.

Of 186 food products bearing advisory statements regarding peanut or 16 products that had peanut listed as a minor ingredient, 8.6% and 37.5% contained detectable levels of peanut (>2.5 ppm whole peanut). An additional market survey of 215 …

Agricultural Research Magazine, April 2013

Agricultural Research Magazine

Table of Contents

4 Irrigation Wastewater: Waste Not, Want Not

6 Two Approaches for Optimizing Water Productivity

8 Compounds in Whole-Grain Rice Varieties

10 New Discovery Makes Detecting Johne’s Disease Easier

12 House Fly Virus Stops Flies from Reproducing

14 Improved Vitamin B12 Test May Help Young and Old Alike

16 Rooting Out a Novel Stress Syndrome in Pigs

18 A Modeling Milestone for Soil Phosphorus Management

20 New Technologies for Studying Crops and Crop Diseases

23 Locations Featured in This Magazine Issue

New Technologies For Studying Crops And Crop Diseases, Dennis O’Brien

Agricultural Research Magazine

Agricultural Research Service scientists in New York and California have developed very different technologies that share a common thread. They offer scientists new, innovative ways to probe what happens when a crop is threatened by drought or disease.

Michelle Cilia and Stewart Gray, ARS scientists at the Robert W. Holley Center for Agriculture and Health in Ithaca, New York, and their colleagues at the University of Washington have found a way to map the structure of an elusive protein that gives certain plant viruses the ability to travel from plants to insects, through the insects, and back into plants.

Andrew …

New Discovery Makes Detecting Johne's Disease Easier, John Bannantine, Sandra Avant

Agricultural Research Magazine

Before a disease can be treated, it must first be identified. But that’s not always easy, especially in the case of Johne’s disease, which affects cattle, sheep, goats, deer, and other ruminants.

Johne’s disease—also known as “paratuberculosis”— is a costly, contagious disease that causes diarrhea, reduced feed intake, weight loss, and sometimes death. Annual estimated losses to cattle producers range from $40 to $227 per infected animal. For the U.S. dairy industry alone, losses exceed $220 million each year.

For years, scientists have been hampered by the fact that any antibody—a protein produced by the immune system to fight infections …

House Fly Virus Stops, Christopher J. Geden, Sandra Avant

Agricultural Research Magazine

The house fly is often considered merely a nuisance. But these flies are capable of transmitting animal and human pathogens that can lead to foodborne diseases, including Escherichia coli, Salmonella, and Shigella bacteria.

Insecticides are important for control, but house flies are particularly good at developing resistance, and their larvae tend to stay deep enough within their gooey food to avoid exposure to sprays.

Scientists at the Agricultural Research Service’s Center for Medical, Agricultural, and Veterinary Entomology (CMAVE) in Gainesville, Florida, are looking at new methods that target adult flies. A promising biological control agent—salivary gland hypertrophy virus …

Challenge For Sustaining Agriculture, Mark Walbridge

Agricultural Research Magazine

With the climate changing and the world’s population expected to rise in the coming decades, supplying a hungry planet with food and fiber will become more of a challenge. By some estimates, food production will have to increase by up to 70 percent to feed the world over the next 40 years. Perhaps no resource is more critical to meeting that challenge than water.

How essential is water to agriculture? An estimated 17 percent of all harvested U.S. cropland is irrigated, accounting for about 56.6 million acres. Worldwide, more than 40 percent of the world’s food is grown on irrigated …

April 2013- Locations Featured In This Magazine Issue

Agricultural Research Magazine

The Agricultural Research Service has about 100 labs all over the country.

Locations Featured in This Magazine Issue

Davis, California 3 research units ■ 117 employees

U.S. Salinity Laboratory, Riverside, California 2 research units ■ 39 employees

U.S. Arid-Land Agricultural Research Center, Maricopa, Arizona 3 research units ■ 80 employees

Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Unit, Aberdeen, Idaho 1 research unit ■ 57 employees

Conservation and Production Research Laboratory, Bushland, Texas 2 research units ■ 55 employees

Roman L. Hruska U.S. Meat Animal Research Center, Clay Center, Nebraska 6 research units ■ 117 employees

Grassland Soil and Water Research …

Rooting Out A Novel Stress Syndrome In Pigs, Dan Nonneman, Sandra Avant

Agricultural Research Magazine

Undergoing surgery, even a minor procedure, can be stressful for anyone. But for people who have malignant hyperthermia, a hereditary disease that’s triggered by certain drugs used for general anesthesia, it can also be dangerous.

Research into this rare, life-threatening condition, which causes a fast rise in body temperature, severe muscle contractions, and sometimes death, was limited until the discovery of a similar disorder in pigs, referred to as “porcine stress syndrome.” The classical syndrome is associated with poor response to stressors like transport and with poor-quality pork. It has been eliminated from commercial herds in the United States, but …

Compounds In Whole-Grain Rice Varieties, Ming-Hsuan Chen, Karen Bett-Garber, Rosalie Marion Bliss

Agricultural Research Magazine

Whole-grain brown rice contains 15 vitamins and minerals, including B vitamins, potassium, magnesium, and iron—all nutrients the body needs to grow and develop normally. In addition to these essential nutrients, there are bioactive phytochemicals in rice, as well as in other whole grains, vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, and seeds. Although the role of these plant chemicals in terms of human health has not been proven, a body of evidence suggests that some phytochemicals could be nutritionally beneficial.

Now, studies headed by chemist Ming-Hsuan Chen, who is with the Agricultural Research Service’s Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, Arkansas, …

A Modeling Milestone For Soil Phosphorus Management, Peter Vadas, Ann Perry

Agricultural Research Magazine

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is looking for ways to upgrade the Phosphorus Index, a simple management tool developed during the 1990s to gauge the risk of phosphorus losses from agricultural fields. In developing a national nutrient-management policy, NRCS allowed states to modify the original index—a matrix of source and transport factors that contribute to phosphorus loss— with inputs to account for local variations in soils, climate, management, and water quality goals.

But this resulted in widely different state-by-state phosphorus indices that often didn’t agree with each other on how to manage phosphorus. “We’d put …

Two Approaches For Optimizing Water Productivity, Dennis O’Brien

Agricultural Research Magazine

Agricultural Research Service researchers in Bushland, Texas, are helping farmers make the most of their water supplies in a region where they depend on the Ogallala Aquifer, a massive underground reservoir under constant threat of overuse.

Steve Evett, Susan O’Shaughnessy, and their colleagues at the Conservation and Production Research Laboratory are developing and testing soil-water and plant-stress sensors and automated irrigation systems that will irrigate fields only as necessary. Automated systems are considered key to sustainable use of the aquifer and to helping growers reduce water and labor costs.

“As water becomes more precious and the costs to pump it …

Irrigation Wastewater: Waste Not, Want Not, Dennis Corwin, Ann Perry

Agricultural Research Magazine

Agricultural producers on the west side of California’s San Joaquin Valley (WSJV) used to drain irrigation wastewater into Kesterson Reservoir, a series of holding ponds that were part of the San Luis National Wildlife Refuge. But selenium levels in the water became hazardous to waterfowl, so the storage facility was closed in 1987. Since then, farmers have been keeping the wastewater—which also contains salt and traces of arsenic, boron, and molybdenum—in evaporation ponds on their own land, which takes around 10 percent of the crop land out of production.

Agricultural Research Service soil scientist Dennis Corwin and his colleagues had …

Improved Vitamin B12 Test May, John W. Newman, Lindsay H. Allen, Marcia Wood

Agricultural Research Magazine

Vitamin B12 helps your body perform many vital chores, including forming healthy red blood cells; keeping your brain functioning smoothly; and processing (metabolizing) the fats, proteins, and carbohydrates in foods that you eat.

Like all vitamins, B12 is a micronutrient, meaning that we need it in only very small amounts. We get B12 from animal products— meats, fish, poultry, eggs, cheese, and yogurt, for instance—or from B12-fortified foods, notably breakfast cereals. We can also obtain it from nutritional supplements, such as B12 tablets or multivitamin pills. People who need to boost their B12 levels quickly may do so via shots …

Linking Animal Behavior To Useful Natural Repellents, Sandra Avant

Agricultural Research Magazine

A little monkey business is revealing a few clues about natural remedies that animals use to protect themselves against biting insects and arthropods.

Certain species of animals, such as monkeys and birds, anoint themselves with citrus, other plants, and creatures like millipedes. To find out more about this behavior and to determine if any chemicals in the anointing substances effectively deter ticks and mosquitoes, scientists are examining responses to natural compounds.

Scientists at the Agricultural Research Service Henry A. Wallace Beltsville [Maryland] Agricultural Research Center (BARC) and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) at the National Zoological Park in Front …

An Atlas For Guatemala, A Tool For Conserving World Crops, Karen Williams, Dennis O’Brien

Agricultural Research Magazine

With exotic names like ayote de caballo (a wild squash), friajolito (a wild bean), and teocinte (a wild relative of corn), Guatemala’s native plants seem very different from the agricultural bounty produced by farmers in the United States and other countries. But many of these native plants carry genes that may be vital to global food security. A new tool, developed by a team that includes Agricultural Research Service scientists, will make it easier to find and preserve these important plants. The tool is an interactive atlas designed to provide Guatemalan scientists and land managers with information on where these …

Wasted Food: What We Are Doing To Prevent Costly Losses, Robert L. Fireovid

Agricultural Research Magazine

Like many other public and private organizations, the Agricultural Research Service is very concerned about how much food goes to waste between farm and fork—both nationally and internationally.

By reducing losses in our food systems, U.S. growers, processors, and others can enhance America’s ability to feed itself and the world. By the same token, slashing waste may provide new opportunities to reduce costs along the entire supply chain and make better use of increasingly limited natural resources.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (ERS) estimated— in 2008—that the amount of food lost annually at just the retail and …