The role of additives in starch-based edible coatings.
Edible films and coating are the effective method for preserving fresh food products. A current review focuses on the effects of additives on the physicochemical and bioactive properties of starch-based films and coating.
Starch-based edible films and coating have garnered a significant interest as natural and environmentally friendly solutions.
Edible films and coating provide a potentially effective method for preserving fresh food products by reducing moisture loss, regulating respiration rate, improving surface smoothness, and or preventing microbial growth during their storage. Concurrently, starch has proven for its inexpensive, non-toxic, and widely available attribute for film and coating production. However, this biopolymer has some shortcomings when making films to preserve food. For this reason, the use of additives in its synthesis is frequent.
A current review focuses on the effects of additives on the physicochemical barriers, and bioactive properties of starch-based biodegradable polymer films and coating, as well as how these composites comply with the requirements to produce edible and biodegradable food-based films and coating. These biopolymers perform magnificently as transporters for active ingredients isolated from natural sources and can be introduced into packaged foods at a controlled rate. Furthermore, the additives demonstrated antibacterial and antioxidant capabilities in the films or coating, which would improve the shelf stability of coating or packaged food.
Native wheat starch Lory® Starch Saphir pure optimises coating stability.
The clean-label, wheat-derived, native adhesion starch from food ingredients specialist Loryma stands out from other such products on the market because it is not modified and does not need an E number. Thanks to an innovative production process, Lory® Starch Saphir pure is as efficient as conventional modified starches, and provides optimum adhesion properties for all types of substrate coatings.
By simply declaring it as “wheat starch”, the adhesion starch meets current consumer preference for an easy-to-understand ingredient list without E numbers. This product is a superior version of Lory® Starch Saphir and replaces it in the Loryma range.
Lory® Starch Saphir pure has excellent adhesion properties and forms vapour permeable films. This allows steam to escape through the coating, which binds optimally to various substrates such as meat, fish or plant-based alternatives. There are also no air bubbles or crumbling of the coating. Used as a functional ingredient in batter and tempura or as a pre-dust, Lory® Starch Saphir pure provides a crispy surface while reducing fat absorption in the fryer. The wheat starch itself is neutral in taste and has a low viscosity, making it easy to use.
Dr Markus Wydra, Head of Research & Development Starches & Proteins at the Crespel & Deiters Gorup, was involved in product development and explains: “Until now, manufacturers have had no choice but to forego the use of adhesion starches and their associated benefits if they wanted to declare their product free of E numbers. With the introduction of Lory® Starch Saphir pure, however, we have developed a highly functional wheat-based solution that contributes significantly to a perfectly crisp breading.”
AGRANA expands production capacity for technical starches and invests € 23 million at Gmünd site.
This year, the fruit, starch and sugar group AGRANA is starting with the construction of an additional drum drying plant at the site of its potato starch mill in Gmünd (Waldviertel District of Lower Austria). With an investment volume of € 23 million, AGRANA aims to boost the production of technical special starches for the construction and adhesive sectors. The plan is to complete the new plant in July 2025 and, as a result, increase the production capacity of technical starches by a third. “Due to legal requirements, technical sectors are increasingly relying on organic materials and, therefore, selecting starches as a sustainable alternative to oil-based products. The expansion of our facility is in response to this rising demand and safeguards the competitiveness of the Gmünd site,” stresses Norbert Harringer, CTO of AGRANA Beteiligungs-AG. In Europe, AGRANA is the market leader in both technical and organic starches.
AGRANA starch production facility Gmünd
At Austria’s only potato starch mill in Gmünd, with a workforce of around 420 AGRANA manufactures both starches for the food sector as well as starches for technical applications, such as in the construction, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals industries. The facility in Gmünd also processes organic potatoes to make organic starches, organic sweeteners and organic long-life potato products, such as purées, potato dough mixes and infant formula. In total, AGRANA manufactures over 300 different starch products at its mill in Gmünd.
AGRANA Starch, with a total of five mills, of which three are located in Austria, in Aschach/Donau, Gmünd and Pischelsdorf, and a further two in Szabadegyhaza (Hungary) and Tandarei (Romania), AGRANA has established itself as a specialist for customised starch applications.
In the construction chemicals sector, starches from AGRANA provide for the right consistency not only with starch ether for gypsum and slaked lime but also in cement and slaked cement construction materials. Due to their excellent adhesive properties, AGRANA starches are used in the adhesives industry as an alternative to synthetic adhesives and are referred to as green glues.
Tapioca starch sweetener gets GRAS status from the FDA.
Resistant dextrin derived from tapioca starch — which is a sweetener called FiberSmart made by Anderson Advanced Ingredients — received generally recognized as safe status from the FDA. This means the ingredient can be more easily incorporated into food products.
FiberSmart is made through a process involving roasting and drying tapioca starch to create the sweetener. It is more than 90% dietary fiber and is 20% as sweet as sugar. The ingredient also is low glycemic and can be used in a wide variety of applications, including baked goods, beverages, cereals and bars, candies and frozen desserts.
As consumers are being more cautious about what they eat, a new better-for-you natural sweetener creates another choice for manufacturers.
FiberSmart is the latest new sweetener to gain approval from the FDA. Its versatility and nutritional benefits make it stand out as companies create food and drink that both taste good and benefit the health of the consumer.
The ingredient has been available since 2015, and is recognized as a dietary fiber. Anderson Advanced Ingredients says that it is water soluble and has a smooth mouthfeel, unlike some fibers that feel gritty.
FiberSmart also has promise as a substitute for maltodextrin, a common ingredient for thickening, texturizing and preservation that is in many CPG items. Maltodextrin has a high glycemic index, while FiberSmart does not.
“We have received so much positive feedback about FiberSMART not only for its versatility and tolerability, but also because its tight tolerances around water activity improve on product consistency and production run times,” John Jarmul, vice president of marketing at Anderson Advanced Ingredients, said in a statement. “It’s a great product for lowering sugar content and increasing fiber without sacrificing taste or texture.”
Because it is a fiber, Anderson Advanced Ingredients wanted to ensure the ingredient would not cause any digestive issues for consumers. A study by Australia’s Murdoch University Centre for Molecular Medicine found even a double dose of the recommended amount of the ingredient was well tolerated by testers.
Ingredients such as FiberSmart are becoming more sought after by manufacturers seeking to make products that are healthy, clean label and low in sugar. Because FiberSmart is not a sugar, it does not appear on Nutrition Facts labels as one.
With GRAS status, FiberSmart could be on its way to wider adoption in a variety of food items. But like most alternative sweeteners, it’s not likely to be used on its own.
While there is a vast array of sweeteners derived from plants, fruits, starches and proteins, most do not behave exactly like sugar. FiberSmart has just a fifth of the sweetening power as the same amount of sugar, and as a fiber does not have many of its functional properties.
This kind of ingredient can cut back on the amount of sugar that is needed for a product, or it can be used with other more intensely sweet alternatives.
Potato starch and Martian soil make ‘cosmic concrete’ for extra-terrestrial structures – just add astronaut tears.
Simulated Martian soil, potato starch and salt have been combined into a new concrete-like material that could one day be used to build structures on Mars.
The tough new material, known as StarCrete, was developed by a team of researchers at the University of Manchester.
Using terrestrial materials to build infrastructure in space would be “prohibitively expensive and difficult to achieve” with current methods, the researchers said. Instead, future space construction will need to rely on simple materials that are easily available to astronauts.
StarCrete offers a possible solution, the researchers claimed. The material is reportedly twice as strong as ordinary concrete, and could be perfectly suited for construction work in extra-terrestrial environments.
The team used ordinary potato starch as a binder, mixed with simulated Mars dust to create StarCrete. Testing showed that the material has a compressive strength of 72 Megapascals (MPa), over twice as strong as the 32 MPa of ordinary concrete. StarCrete made from Moon dust was even stronger, at over 91 MPa.
This work improved on a previous project from the same team, which theorised that astronaut blood and urine could be used as a binding agent. While the resulting material had a compressive strength of around 40 MPa, the process had the drawback of requiring blood on a regular basis. When operating in an environment as hostile as space, this option was seen as less feasible than using potato starch.
“Since we will be producing starch as food for astronauts, it made sense to look at that as a binding agent rather than human blood,” said lead researcher Dr Aled Roberts, research fellow at the Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub.
“Also, current building technologies still need many years of development and require considerable energy and additional heavy processing equipment, which all adds cost and complexity to a mission. StarCrete doesn’t need any of this and so it simplifies the mission and makes it cheaper and more feasible.
“And anyway, astronauts probably don’t want to be living in houses made from scabs and urine!”
Either way, the future astronauts might have to make some sacrifices to build their extra-terrestrial homes – the researchers discovered that magnesium chloride, a common salt found in tears, “significantly improved” the material’s strength. Thankfully, it should also be obtainable from the Martian surface.
The researchers calculated that a 25kg sack of dehydrated potatoes contains enough starch to produce almost half a tonne of StarCrete, equivalent to 213 bricks – a three-bedroom house takes roughly 7,500 bricks to build.
Dr Roberts and his team recently launched a start-up company, DeakinBio, which is exploring ways to improve StarCrete so it can also be used in a terrestrial setting.
If used on Earth, StarCrete could offer a greener alternative to traditional concrete, the researchers claimed. Cement and concrete account for about 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions, as the process by which they are made requires very high firing temperatures. StarCrete can be made in an ordinary oven or microwave at normal home baking temperatures, reducing the amount of energy required.
UA researchers patent water-soluble plastic material based on potato starch.
It does not pollute the seas and is suitable for use as packaging.
The University of Alicante Waste, Energy, Environment and Nanotechnology (REMAN) research group (in Spain) has developed a process for obtaining a water-soluble plastic material based on potato starch, which will soon be introduced on the market through the UA technology-Based Company Solublion, linked to the Alicante Science Park. According to professor of Chemical Engineering Ignacio Martín Gullón, this new material is also compostable and biodegradable, being suitable for use as a flexible film, preferably in bags and packaging, and has great advantages over existing ones.
The development of this new material arose from a thesis on thermoplastic starch for the development of environmentally sustainable materials by now president and CEO of Solublion Daniel Domene López. The thesis’ title reveals the intention that this new material will make a relevant contribution to mitigating the impact caused by the poor management of conventional plastic waste as it does not generate an environmental problem at the end of its useful life in the event that, due to poor waste management, it ends up in natural ecosystems. Domene López explained that the consumption of worldwide plastic materials before the pandemic was around 370 million tonnes, a figure that they estimate could exceed 400 million in the coming years due to the increase in packaging and single-use materials. Of these, before the pandemic, only two million were biodegradable plastics, and by the end of the decade there will be an estimation of eight million tonnes of biodegradable plastics in demand by consumers.
The plastic developed by the REMAN group is highly stable and has a low migration rate. As explained by Ignacio Martín, this group’s solutions are intended for use in the packaging and single-use plastics industry as a direct replacement for conventional alternatives. In addition, their patented technology allows them to offer a wide range of mechanical performance, enabling them to tailor our products to the needs of their customers.
The formulations developed by the research group require the starch to be gelatinised and plasticised in the presence of plasticisers, usually water and another plasticiser with a higher boiling point. Plasticised starch, surrounded by plasticiser molecules, has a high tendency to retrograde, i.e. it partially recovers its original ordered structure, which leads to a decrease in its properties. However, with the technology developed by the group, this migration is largely avoided, extending the useful life of these materials without detriment to their mechanical properties, biodegradability, compostability and water solubility.
This starchy bioplastic could make soggy paper straws a thing of the past.
These new bioplastic straws made using potato starch and lignin are strong in water but still biodegrade.
In the fight against pollution, several regions in the U.S. have banned the use of plastic straws. Alternative materials exist, but most options are either too expensive to scale up, go limp in drinks or taste bad. But now, a team reporting in ACS Omega has developed a new type of bioplastic film from all-natural, degradable materials that can be rolled into a straw that doesn’t get soggy and is stronger than plastic.
As efforts to reduce plastic waste take hold, many researchers and companies have turned to plastic alternatives to fabricate straws that comply with new laws and regulations. But so far, most options either end up breaking down in a drink, like paper straws, or require extra steps and energy to manufacture, like metal or sugarcane straws.
But some biopolymers, such as starch and lignin, are readily available as byproducts of other industrial processes and could serve as cheap bioplastic ingredients. Lignin’s natural strength could help overcome starch’s brittleness, especially when combined with a bio-based crosslinker, such as citric acid. So, Dickens Agumba, Duc Hoa Pham and Jaehwan Kim wanted to see if these materials could be combined into a plastic film that was tough, stable in water, yet would still break down when no longer needed.
To create the straws, the researchers blended lignin with either potato starch or polyvinyl alcohol—a more traditional bioplastic material—then added citric acid. They spread the slurry into a thin layer, rolled it into a cylinder and cured it at over 350 F. The bioplastic naturally self-adhered at the seam, but heat treatment set it and made it even stronger. In tests, the cylinders were stronger than those made of polypropylene plastic, yet still flexible.
After two months outside, the plastic straws remained unchanged, while the team’s straws degraded significantly. The bioplastic film also offered UV protection, which could be useful for other applications, such as a coating for greenhouse windows. The researchers say that this material could not only reduce the amount of plastic waste in the environment, but also be used to create other, more sustainable bioplastic products from otherwise wasted materials.
Tate & Lyle’s facility in the Netherlands helps deliver progress on sustainability.
Tate & Lyle PLC (Tate & Lyle), a world leader in ingredient solutions for healthier food and beverages, is working to deliver on its environmental commitments, as demonstrated by strong progress at its facility in Koog aan de Zaan (Koog) in the Netherlands on water use, waste management and carbon emissions reduction.
More sustainably made ingredients.
Engineers at Koog have adapted the production process for Tate & Lyle’s CLARIA® Clean Label Functional Starches, the hero brand in its texturants portfolio, to lower the product line’s carbon footprint and water use by 34% and 35% respectively1. CLARIA® is a corn-based starch used in products such as beverages, soups, sauces, and dressings, providing texture, viscosity, and gelling benefits, amongst others. The production efficiencies, which do not affect the ingredient’s functionality, will be implemented globally for all Tate & Lyle’s CLARIA® production, with the more sustainably made product line available to food and beverage customers in limited supply from early next year. From early 2025, all CLARIA® will be made using the more sustainable method developed at Koog under the new CLARIA® G brand, with trial samples soon available.
This production enhancement at Koog, which also purchases 100% renewable electricity, supports Tate & Lyle’s efforts to deliver on its science-based target to reduce its Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions2 by 30% by 2030, and to achieve net zero by 2050. This innovation also brings Tate & Lyle one step closer to achieving its target of reducing water use by 15% by 2030.
Beneficially using all waste.
The team at Koog has also recently hit a major waste management milestone by finding a beneficial use for 99.9% of site waste, including providing waste water sludge, organic matter that comes from the corn wet milling process, as nutrients for the animals and land of local farms. This work contributes to Tate & Lyle’s target to beneficially use 100% of the waste it generates globally by 2030.
Paul Clarijs, Plant Manager at Koog aan de Zaan, Tate & Lyle, said: “Finding innovative ways to care for our planet is something our workforce cares deeply about. We operate a continuous improvement mindset and are pleased to have developed new ways of working at Koog that will inspire each Tate & Lyle site on their sustainability journey and provide benefits to our wider network.”
Coralie Falize, Innovation Lead for Texturants at Tate & Lyle, said: “By continuing to expand our texturant portfolio, including diversifying our raw materials, we are building our knowledge of production enhancement that help us and our customers to meet ambitious environmental commitments. Our next generation CLARIA® G, has the same functionality as the existing product line that our customers know and love but with stronger sustainability credentials.”
Anna Pierce, Director of Sustainability at Tate & Lyle, added: “This new, more sustainable process for CLARIA® production will help us increase capacity over time and provide customers with the more sustainable products they are looking for as we partner to tackle the biggest challenge facing society, the climate crisis.”
Scientists have produced a system that produces protein from starch using AI.
Scientists have created an AI system, called ProGen, that generates artificial enzymes from scratch. In laboratory tests, some of these enzymes worked as well as those found in nature, even when their artificially generated amino acid sequences diverged significantly from any known natural protein.
The experiment demonstrates that natural language processing, although it was developed to read and write language text, can learn at least some of the underlying principles of biology. Salesforce Research developed the AI program, called ProGen, which uses next-token prediction to assemble amino acid sequences into artificial proteins.
Scientists said the new technology could become more powerful than directed evolution, the Nobel-prize-winning protein design technology, and it will energize the 50-year-old field of protein engineering by speeding the development of new proteins that can be used for almost anything from therapeutics to degrading plastic.
“The artificial designs perform much better than designs that were inspired by the evolutionary process,” said James Fraser, Ph.D., professor of bioengineering and therapeutic sciences at the UCSF School of Pharmacy, and an author of the work, which was published on Jan. 26, in Nature Biotechnology. A previous version of the paper has been available on the preprint server BiorXiv since July 2021, where it garnered several dozen citations before being published in a peer-reviewed journal.
ProGen works in a similar way to AIs that can generate text. ProGen learned how to generate new proteins by learning the grammar of how amino acids combine to form 280 million existing proteins. Instead of the researchers choosing a topic for the AI to write about, they could specify a group of similar proteins for it to focus on. In this case, they chose a group of proteins with antimicrobial activity.
The researchers programmed checks into the AI’s process so it wouldn’t produce the amino acids, but they also tested a sample of the AI-proposed molecules in real cells. Of the 100 molecules they physically created, 66 participated in chemical reactions similar to those of natural proteins that destroy bacteria in egg whites and saliva. This suggested that these new proteins could also kill bacteria.
Scientists said the new technology could become more powerful than directed evolution, a Nobel-prize-winning protein design technology, and will energize the 50-year-old field of protein engineering by speeding the development of new proteins that can be used for almost anything from therapeutics to degrading plastic.
“The language model is learning aspects of evolution, but it’s different than the normal evolutionary process,” Fraser said. “We now have the ability to tune the generation of these properties for specific effects. For example, an enzyme that’s incredibly thermostable or likes acidic environments or won’t interact with other proteins.”
To create the model, scientists simply fed the amino acid sequences of 280 million different proteins of all kinds into the machine learning model and let it digest the information for a couple of weeks. Then, they fine-tuned the model by priming it with 56,000 sequences from five lysozyme families, along with some contextual information about these proteins.
“It was sort of an ‘it looks like a duck, it quacks like a duck’ situation and X-rays confirmed it also walked like a duck,” says Fraser. He was surprised to have found a well-functioning protein in the first relatively small fraction of all the ProGen-generated proteins that they tested.
A similar process could be used to create new test molecules for drug development, though they will still have to be tested in labs, which is time-consuming, says Madani.
“The capability to generate functional proteins from scratch out-of-the-box demonstrates we are entering into a new era of protein design,” said Ali Madani, Ph.D., founder of Profluent Bio, a former research scientist at Salesforce Research, and the paper’s first author. “This is a versatile new tool available to protein engineers, and we’re looking forward to seeing the therapeutic applications.”
Chinese researchers find new way to synthesize starch, proteins from corn stalk.
Chinese researchers recently developed a method of high efficiency for synthesizing artificial starch and microbial proteins from corn stalk. This method can cut the production cost of artificial starch and provide a new way to produce food.
Graphical Abstract
Growing populations and climate change pose great challenges to food security. The efficient conversion of agricultural waste into artificial food is an important way to alleviate a food crisis and realize sustainable agricultural development.
The researchers from the Biotechnology Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences and other China-based institutions, used a multi-enzyme molecular system and baker’s yeast to convert cellulose in corn stalks to artificial starch, and to produce microbial protein by fermentation under aerobic conditions.
The whole production process requires only a small investment in equipment, does not require coenzyme or energy input and does not lead to sugar loss, offering the possibility of producing artificial starch and microbial proteins at low cost, according to the study.
