Research

Transforming our food system towards sustainability is an important starting point for achieving the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As the use of animal-based ingredients and foods contributes to global environmental problems, the shift towards alternative protein sources is an important lever for achieving these global agreements. The protein transition describes this shift from animal protein sources to alternative protein sources such as plant-based or precision fermented proteins. Precision fermentation in particular offers promising solutions to the challenge of producing proteins sustainably, efficiently and with less environmental impact, but at the same time with specific functionality. Milk and its proteins are at the centre of research and commercial activities in the field of precision fermentation, especially cheese as an important application area for these proteins. A major obstacle to the development of innovative food products from precision fermented milk proteins is a lack of understanding of the relationship between food structure and texture. Specifically, there is a major scientific gap in understanding how the physico-chemical properties of emulsion interfaces and their structure affect food texture. The lack of understanding of this relationship leads to difficulties on several levels, particularly in the application and use of proteins produced by precision fermentation. Dairy proteins are often used as functional ingredients in foods and play a key role in determining the final texture, structure and other sensory properties of the food. However, the physicochemical properties of the oil-water interphase can influence the behaviour and performance of these proteins in food systems. Without a clear understanding of this relationship, it can be difficult to predict how milk proteins will behave in different food applications, which can lead to inconsistent or sub-optimal results.

s part of a holistic strategy, the potential of climate-smart grain crops - specifically sorghum - is to be identified and subsequently exploited facing the challenge of a sustainable feeding of the growing world population. This is only possible with high-yield and weather-tolerant agricultural raw materials. The focus must be on crops that emit low levels of greenhouse gas while being resilient to heat and drought. Until now, sorghum has not been used as an ingredient in staple foods in Central European countries. However, sorghum shows a high field yield and is drought tolerant. Therefore, bundled research activities and cooperation with corporate partners are needed to establish the use of sorghum as a major ingredient in Western diet and to develop sensory accepted and high nutritional food products. Sorghum is already used as a staple food in African and Indian regions. However, the functionality and sensory attributes of wholegrain sorghum products do not meet the cultural European quality expectations. There is still limited understanding of the functional behaviour of different sorghum milling fractions in bakery and pasta products. It is crucial to investigate the impact of different milling fractions on technological functionality as well as on nutritional and sensory properties. Then we can adapt and control the milling process for producing high quality sorghum fractions. Furthermore, the grain and the milling fractions are functionalized by several approaches such as germination, enzymatic and hydrothermal approaches to optimize and increase the functionality in terms of digestibility and gas holding properties. Thus, sorghum-based gluten-free breads and new 3D printed texturates as well as sorghum-wheat-based breads, fine bakery products and pasta of higher nutritional value and sensory acceptability can be produced from climate-smart grains in Europe. The CLIC consortium consists of experts in the field of food technology, cereal process engineering with many years of expertise in the field of alternative cereal crops, i.e. University of Hohenheim, BOKU and HTLLMT Wels. Due to the similar effects of climate change on cereal cultivation, Germany and Austria are equally in search of solutions. Through a transnational project, the necessary knowledge can be multiplied, and the corresponding work packages are distributed according to the expertise of the research partners. The project will be coordinated by FEI (Germany) and ecoplus (Austria). The user committee consists of branches along the value chain: milling, additive suppliers, consultants, bakery and pasta production and related associations.

During silage fermentation butyric acid-producing clostridia can multiply as a result of incorrect fermentation. As contaminants, clostridia enter the barn environment with the silage and are transferred into the raw milk during milking. This subsequently leads to serious quality defects in dairy products, in particular to undesirable gas formation during hard cheese ripening. Monitoring of silage quality with regard to clostridial contamination is therefore of great importance in order to avoid the introduction of clostridia into cheese production. As part of the project, a molecular biological detection method for clostridia is to be developed for long-term use in the quality control of silage.