CORN REFINERS HONOR OUTSTANDING RESEARCHERS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 20, 2007
CONTACT: Audrae Erickson
(202) 331-1634
WASHINGTON, DC — The Corn Refiners Association (CRA) today announced that Genyi Zhang, Ph.D., of Purdue University and Claire Moallic, Ph.D., of Iowa State University are the 2007 winners of the CRA/AACC International Outstanding Poster Awards.
The awards provide recognition to outstanding researchers for their efforts to advance scientific principles in the corn wet milling industry. The winners were selected during the AACC annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, October 7-10, 2007. More than 200 papers and posters were presented at the meeting, with about 35 focusing specifically on the corn refining process or its end products.
“CRA is pleased to honor these innovative researchers for their valuable contribution to the advancement of grain science,” said CRA President, Audrae Erickson. “We are proud to continue a history of strong support of engineering and science aimed at improving the products and processing technologies of the corn wet milling industry.”
Dr. Zhang’s poster, “Nutritional property of cooked starches from maize mutants: A parabolic relationship between slowly digestible starch content and amylopectin fine structure,” analyzed the relationship between the molecular structure of cooked maize starch and its slow digestion. The results indicated that amylopectin starch molecules with either a higher proportion of short chains or long chains contain more slowly digestible starch.
Dr. Moallic’s poster, “Modification of amylopectin chain length in transgenic maize plants results in novel starches with altered hydrolysis properties,” applied fluorescence-assisted capillary electrophoresis to determine that starch resistance to digestion was enhanced in long-chain amylopectin starch relative to wild type starch, whereas short-chain amylopectin starch was hydrolyzed more rapidly and at lower temperatures.
CRA is the national trade association representing the corn refining industry in the United States. CRA and its predecessors have served this important segment of American agribusiness since 1913. Corn refiners manufacture sweeteners, ethanol, starch, bioproducts, corn oil, and feed products from corn components such as starch, oil, protein, and fiber.
