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1 A MAGAZI N E OF TH E AGR ICU LTU RAL R ESEARC H PROGRAM AT NORTH CAROLI NA AGR ICU LTU RAL AN D TEC H N ICAL STATE U N IVERSITY

> Could hog waste be North Carolina’s black gold?

> Mushroom growers explore the great indoors.

> Undergraduates solve issues in ag.

PERSONALNUTRITION:FOODSCIENCE’S

NEWFRONTIER

INS

IDE

North Carolina A&T State University

Agricultural Research Program in the School of

Agriculture and Environmental Sciences

Dr. Harold L. Martin Sr., Chancellor

Dr. William Randle, Dean, School of

Agriculture and Environmental Sciences

Dr. Shirley Hymon-Parker, Associate Dean, Research

Dr. M. Ray McKinnie, Associate Dean, Administrator,

The Cooperative Extension Program

Tommy Ellis, Associate Dean, Administration

Dr. Donald McDowell, Associate Dean,

Academic Programs

Produced by the Agricultural

Communications and Technology Unit:

Director: Robin Adams

Writer: Laurie Gengenbach

Contributing Writer: Cathy Gant Hill

Editors: Alton Franklin, Cathy Gant Hill,

Laurie Gengenbach

Photographer: James Parker

Contributing Photographer: Stephen Charles

Graphic Designer: Donna Wojek-Gibbs

Video Producer: Ron Fisher

Send change of address and correspondence to:

Laurie Gengenbach

Agricultural Research Program

C. H. Moore Agricultural Research Station

Greensboro, NC 27411

On the cover: From left, Drs. Shengmin Sang,

Guibing Chen, Mohamed Ahmedna and Leonard

Williams, lead scientists at N.C. A&T’s Center for

Excellence in Post-Harvest Technologies at the

North Carolina Research Campus.

8,000 copies of this public document were

printed on recycled paper at a cost of $11,212.00

or $1.40 per copy.

North Carolina A&T State University is a

land-grant, doctoral research university and

AA/EEO employer.

Distributed in furtherance of the acts of Congress

of May 8 and June 30, 1914. Employment and

program opportunities are open to all people

regardless of race, color, national origin, sex, age

or disability. North Carolina A&T State University,

North Carolina State University, U.S. Department of

Agriculture and local governments cooperating.

The projects described in this document are sup-

ported in whole or in part by the USDA National

Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Its con-

tents are solely the responsibility of the authors,

and do not necessarily represent the official views

of NIFA.

Copyright © 2011 School of Agriculture and

Environmental Sciences, North Carolina A&T State

University. Re:search may not be reproduced unless

prior permission is granted and credit is given.

Vision

Re:

MissionThe School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences provides

opportunities for individuals from diverse backgrounds to achieve

excellence in the food, agricultural, family and environmental sciences

through exemplary and integrative instruction, and through scholarly,

creative and effective research and Extension programs.

Re:

The School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences shall be a premier

learner-centered community that develops and preserves intellectual

capital in the food, agricultural, family and environmental sciences through

interdisciplinary learning, discovery and engagement.

For an online edition of Re:search, visit www.ag.ncat.edu/research/re_search_magazine.html

For video interviews with researchers providing additional information, visit www.ag.ncat.edu/research/interviews/index.html

<

<18 Health Science’s Frontier: Peppers await testing in the Food Safety Lab.

18 Health Science’s Frontier: A media outlet interviews Dr. Jianmei Yu about progress toward creating peanuts safe for allergy sufferers.

Mission

4 RESEARCH IS MAKING MUSHROOM PRODUCTION A YEAR-ROUND OPPORTUNITY

Growing in the great indoors

8 RESEARCHERS SMELL OPPORTUNITY IN HOG WASTE

From waste stream to revenue stream

12 UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH SCHOLARS PROGRAM

Young scientists address issues in economics, health, soils, animal feed

18 HEALTH SCIENCE’S NEW FRONTIER

A look at food safety, functional foods, inactivating allergens, food fiber, designer biochar

34 BUILDING CAPACITY

USDA funded projects in the School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences

<

12 Undergraduate Research Scholar: Kaya Feaster investigates essential oils that may fight foodborne pathogens.

A magazine of the Agricultural Research Program in the School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University

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A strong economy is often described as one that “makes, creates and innovates.” To this I would add, it is also one that educates. As a land-grant university, we cannot be “makers.” That’s the province of private industry. But we can improve on what we do best: innovate and educate. That’s why I am especially pleased to bring you this special, expanded issue of Re:search, in which we highlight two of our forward-looking contributions to a

stronger economy and ecosystem: the Center for Excellence in Post-Harvest Technologies at the North Carolina Research Campus, and our Undergraduate Research Scholars Program. Undergraduates selected for this program are not only gaining a better understanding of science, but they are

also developing a desire to pursue careers as scientists. It’s this new talent that our knowledge-based economy will rely on in the future. Talent is part of our present as well. For instance, our new Center for Excellence in Post-Harvest Technologies is already beginning to make its mark in the food research arena. In the following pages, you will read how scientists there are developing biotech solutions to foodborne illness, food allergens, diabetes, cancer and other issues. The Center’s overarching goal is the same as that of the North Carolina Research Campus: to commercialize these and future

discoveries in order to spur economic growth, protect the environment, and improve health and well-being for individuals. We meet these goals best when engaged in collaborative partnerships with private industry. For instance, our ag and tech researchers are now working with such companies as Pre-Gel America, Dyadic, and Mycorrhiza Biotech LLC to develop better consumer products and industrial processes. The problems that confront us today are staggering in their complexity. They include an obesity epidemic that now afflicts children as well as adults and global climate change that is likely to disrupt food and agricultural systems in the coming years. Meanwhile, fossil fuel supplies are dwindling at the same time the world’s population grows rapidly. By 2050, this larger and increasingly prosperous population will require substantially more food and energy than the world can supply at present rates of output, and will add further

strain to the natural resources that sustain life on our planet. The good news is that our land-grant universities are developing answers in the forms of sustainable biofuels and bio-based products for the emerging green economy. Many of the

answers that will fuel our future will come from agricultural and life-sciences research that takes place here at N.C. A&T and at institutions like ours. The Agricultural Research Program at A&T is proud to be part of the land-grant and USDA system that is dedicated to solving these issues. We look forward to doing our part to make sure the new century is at least as productive as the last. With the public’s continued support for science, we are confident it will be.

Administrator’s DeskFrom economy to ecosystem, the land-grant mission connects the dots

Dr. Shirley

Hymon-Parker

The good news is that our land-grant universities are developing answers in the forms of sustainable biofuels and bio-based products for the emerging green economy.

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From economy to ecosystem, the land-grant mission connects the dots

Dr. Mulumebet “Millie” Worku’s genomics research focuses on immunity in cows and other ruminant animals.

ANIMAL SCIENCES PROFESSOR NAMED A&T SENIOR RESEARCHER OF THE YEAR

Dr. Mulumebet “Millie” Worku’s research program is

focused on exploring the molecular and genetic basis for

natural resistance or immunity to mammalian diseases

— especially mastitis — with the goal of improving the

diagnosis, treatment and selection of animals.

It was her work in this area that garnered the

professor of animal sciences the University’s Senior

Researcher of the Year Award for 2010-11, which recognizes

her outstanding contributions to the science of immune-

system genomics and to A&T’s research program.

Worku reports that some of her most rewarding

discoveries to date include the discovery of the “wingless

gene” in goats and pigs, which is the same gene that was

first discovered in fruit flies, and is important to growth

and development. She has also contributed research

toward developing breeding goats for the production of

prosaposin-rich milk. Prosaposin is a protein that could

be helpful in managing Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and

other neurodegenerative diseases.

“It is highly rewarding to be able to share in the

excitement of discovery and learning with my students,

colleagues and collaborators to impact food security and

safety using the fruits of genomics progress,” Worku said.

To colleagues who have observed her dedication and

commitment to both teaching and genomics research

since her arrival at N.C. A&T in 1999, the award came as

no surprise. Her awards nominations from students and

colleagues from the University and from across the state

cite her “knowledge, enthusiasm, vision and energy,”

and particularly her ability to inspire students to pursue

careers in the sciences — qualities that also garnered

Worku the SAES Teacher-of-the-Year Award in 2007.

“I believe that the experience and knowledge that

I gained in her lab and under her mentorship have been

extremely helpful in obtaining a challenging career in

industry,” wrote Antrison Morris, a graduate of A&T’s

master’s program in animal sciences, and now associate

scientist at Xenobiotic Laboratories in Plainsboro, N.J.

During her tenure, Worku has led or collaborated

on 29 research projects worth $7.5 million, and

she continues to lead or collaborate on three or

more research projects each year. Over the years,

her grantsmanship has enabled the Department of

Animal Sciences to acquire genomics-related tools and

instruments that are now providing students with

biotechnology skills in a new genomics course that

she developed. These acquisitions include quantitative

polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and microarrays

instruments, and a bioinformatics learning lab.

Worku previously served as a researcher with

the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and

Drug Administration. She was an International Atomic

Energy Agency research fellow at the University of

Glasgow in Scotland.

Her recent publications include articles in the Journal

of Dairy Science and the American Journal of Animal and

Veterinary Sciences, which report on gene expression in

bovine blood neutrophils, and an evaluation of plant

extracts for use in treating meat goats.

Worku holds a Ph.D. and master’s degree, both in

animal sciences, from the University of Maryland, and

a bachelor’s from the University of Alemaya in Ethiopia,

also in animal sciences.

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Mycologist Dr. Omoanghe Isikhuemhen is turning his focus to high-yield indoor production for North Carolina’s exotic mushroom industry.

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IT’S NEARLY A DECADE SINCE DR. OMOANGHE ISIKHUEMHEN BEGAN SHIITAKE STUDIES AT A&T. Much of his

research during the past 10 years has focused on outdoor

production, a process in which hardwood logs are inoculated

with spawn, sealed with wax, periodically soaked in water and

left in shade to fruit. Their harvest accounts for the bulk of the

state’s shiitake crop. Although successful with farmers, outdoor

cultivation of shiitake – like production of other crops – is a

seasonal endeavor dependent on temperature and shade.

But it doesn’t have to be.

As evidenced by Isikhuemhen’s latest series of

research forays, indoor fruiting houses are the new

frontier for mushroom production, and just as in

the early days of outdoor log inoculation, farmers are

RESEARCHISMAKINGMUSHROOM PRODUCTIONAYEAR-ROUNDOPPORTUNITY

SAES MYCOLOGIST IS LEADING THE WAY TO THE

GREATINDOORS

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beginning to embrace the new possibilities.

“We are exploring indoor shiitake production

because it is the only way to guarantee year-

round production of shiitake,” says Isikhuemhen,

a researcher and associate professor in

A&T’s Department of Natural Resources and

Environmental Design.

The research into indoor production

means that growers can control such factors as

temperature, light, humidity and air exchange;

and thereby extend the mushroom growing

season. Traditionally, indoor shiitake facilities

don’t produce at the same robust level as outdoor

cultivation. Mushrooms grown indoors often have

milder flavors, and can also be smaller, softer and

lighter colored than their outdoor counterparts.

Consequently, Isikhuemhen is working

to genetically stimulate indoor mushrooms to be

more akin to outdoor mushrooms in taste, size

and color. What that stimulation generally amounts

to is a kind of shiitake mating game. Among

the scores and scores of shiitake strains

in Isikhuemhen’s laboratories are 25 select

varieties that were tested to assess their

adaptability to growing indoors. The process

included using spores that were ejected from

the gills – the thin, papery structures that hang

vertically under the cap – of those 25 shiitake

isolates destined to be crossed with one another.

Some of the crossing was done from like strains

and some from different strains.

Isikhuemhen and his assistant, Dr. Felicia

Anike, then created a matrix to track the various

pairings and outcomes, ultimately choosing

isolates that adapted best to such standards as

temperature and light. From the resulting pairings

of the original isolates, three top performers

emerged. Their spores yielded spawn that was

shared with three select mushroom growers in the

western and southern parts of the state to test in

their own indoor environments.

FUNGI FRUITING FANS OUT

Steve Rice, one of the three farmers included

in the research project, has been cultivating

mushrooms for 20 years, and recently built an

indoor fruiting facility at his Madison County

farm. He grew indoor shiitake, with favorable

results, from spawn-infused substrate that

comes in sawdust blocks that were provided by

Isikhuemhen. A primary goal of Isikhuemhen’s

research is to produce strains that can be used

cost-effectively year-round, so that growers aren’t

overwhelmed by heating or cooling costs.

Rice’s fruiting house is made of two metal

shipping containers that are buried under 2 feet of

earth. The fruiting house abuts a small greenhouse

used for staging, washing and packaging. In

summer, the temperature in the houses stays in

an ideal range of 65 - 80 degrees, and in winter

the houses are warmed to that same range with

passive solar heat generated by the greenhouse

and a stone storage heat source.

Rice is known informally around the region

as “the mushroom man,” and more formally as

president of the 80-member North Carolina

Mushroom Growers Association that Isikhuemhen

and A&T helped establish. What began as a

hobby with mushrooms has evolved into more

of an agricultural career – and certainly more

farm income – for Rice since he started working

with Isikhuemhen and the mushroom research

program at A&T.

“There has been a total upgrade of my

knowledge and of the quality of the mushrooms

that I grow,” Rice says.

Indoor production also offers a reduction in

labor demands to farmers. Whereas with outdoor

production scores of logs have to be bored with a

“YES,THETASTEOFTHEOUTDOORFRUITISRELATEDTOITSENVIRONMENT,BUTWITHTHEPROPERTECHNOLOGYYOUCANBRINGTHOSEQUALITIESTOGETHERFORINDOORPRODUCTION.”

—ISIKHUEMHEN

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NORTHCAROLINA’SDIVERSECLIMATEANDREGIONMAKEITONEOFTHEMOSTIDEALPLACESINTHECOUNTRY TOPRODUCEMUSHROOMS–PARTICULARLYSHIITAKE

drill, inoculated with spawn, sealed, regularly

soaked and restacked; indoor production isn’t quite

as demanding. With the latter method, fruiting

blocks of sawdust are soaked once for about six

hours, and the blocks begin to fruit in three-to-four

days and no more than 10 to 12 days. After the first

fruiting, growers can repeat the six-hour soakings to

force second and even third fruitings.

Inoculated logs have longer incubation periods

and generally require more watering (Isikhuemhen

recommends every week or so) to lower the logs’

internal temperature. All that maintenance has

traditionally paid off, though, in the form of taste.

The outdoor-produced shiitake is infused with

elements of its natural surroundings, resulting in an

earthier flavor. Isikhuemhen, though, is undeterred.

His research on indoor shiitake production is

also examining ways to enhance the flavor of fruit

produced in a more controlled environment.

“Yes, the taste of the outdoor fruit is related

to its environment, but with the proper technology

you can bring those qualities together for indoor

production,” Isikhuemhen says. “You can use the

[sawdust] block situation to mimic the logs.”

The results of Rice’s indoor experience have

been positive, but Isikhuemhen isn’t yet ready

to release details of the findings from him and

the other growers. Building better shiitake, so to

speak, will require fruiting bodies hardy enough

to withstand the most minimal heating in winter

and least cooling in summer, to achieve a product

that is both high-quality and affordable. That basic

premise was begun back at the A&T laboratories

where Isikhuemhen and Anike chose donor spores

– to create a superior strain – based on how well

they survived specific temperatures. The next goal

is to ensure that indoor shiitake can compete with

the flavor of their wilder, outdoor counterparts.

Some results of some of the tested isolates,

such as the ones from Rice’s farm, are already back

and others are still in production.

“We know what strains are doing well, but

we expect more to come out of our screening, so

that we have large numbers to give to farmers,”

Isikhuemhen says. “Although we are doing indoor

research, we still have to make sure we give the

farmers the optimal, most cost-effective strains to

work with.”

BUCKS HAVEN’T STOPPED HERE

For Isikhuemhen and the mycology program

at A&T, the goal is to generate and develop the

scientific support that helps farmers become more

successful. Rice is poised to continue reaping

that A&T research. His production has averaged

about 400-700 pounds of mushrooms a year, from

mushrooms grown outside on hardwood logs. With

his indoor operation, though, Rice expects to at least

quadruple that output. He anticipates increasing his

outdoor production to 50-60 pounds per week, and

combined with his indoor operation, he expects to

produce as much as 100-200 pounds a week. His

corresponding mushroom income would grow from

about $6,000 annually to a conservative projection of

$12,000 a year, Rice says.

Rice’s projections are right in line with

estimates from A&T agribusiness experts, who

project an average of about $5,000 a year for

outdoor producers, but as much as $15,000

annually for those with indoor as well as outdoor

facilities. Overall, the 400 or so mushroom growers

in North Carolina account for about $1.2 million a

year in total industry gross sales, according to Dr.

Osei Yeboah, interim director of the L.C. Cooper Jr.

International Trade Center at A&T. Those estimates

and projections are intentionally conservative,

Yeboah says, and are based on the lower production

levels in the state’s eastern region.

Whereas Yeboah exercises a more restrained

eye toward financial possibilities, Isikhuemhen has

an enthusiasm shaped by previous research and

faithful farmers. Testimonials like Rice’s validate the

success and the ongoing work of A&T’s mushroom

biology and biotechnology laboratories, work that

Isikhuemhen sees as integral to the success of

the steadily evolving shiitake industry in the state.

North Carolina’s diverse climate and regions make

it one of the most ideal places in the country to

produce mushrooms – particularly shiitake, which

is the second most commonly grown mushroom in

the United States.

“When North Carolina mushrooms come out,

people should know, ‘Oh, this is North Carolina

mushroom,’ ” Isikhuemhen says. “The business

of shiitake production in North Carolina is going

to be fully researched so that it is not targeting

production quantity, but quality.”

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NORTHCAROLINA’SDIVERSECLIMATEANDREGIONMAKEITONEOFTHEMOSTIDEALPLACESINTHECOUNTRY TOPRODUCEMUSHROOMS–PARTICULARLYSHIITAKE

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Dr. Shuanging Xiu (right) a researcher in A&T’s Agricultural Research Program, holds a flask of bio-oil derived from hog manure, and Dr. Ellie Fini, a researcher in A&T’s Department of Civil Engineering, holds a sample of bioasphalt derived from the same source. The researchers say both products have potential to transform swine manure from waste stream to revenue stream for the benefit of North Carolina’s environment and hog industry.

The goal of North Carolina’s Strategic Plan for

Biofuels Leadership is that 10 percent of liquid

fuels sold in North Carolina will come from

biofuels locally grown and produced by 2017.

Researchers in the Agricultural Research Program

at A&T are working to make that happen.

IN NORTH CAROLINA, hog waste has come to be synonymous with headache. Whether it’s a question of how to store it, how to dispose of it, or how to prevent it from stinking up the neighborhood, answers haven’t come easy. But where farmers, environment-alists, and homeowners see costly problems, researchers at North Carolina A&T see economic opportunity, thanks to emerging biomass industries in North Carolina and worldwide. Using thermochemical conversion, a technology that applies heat and pressure to wet biomass, Drs. Abolghasem Shahbazi and Shuanging Xiu have been transforming hog waste into bio-oil, a product that could be valuable in its own right as boiler fuel, or refined further into transportation fuels, or – as another A&T researcher has discovered – converted to road asphalts. “Bio-oil from animal waste has potential because bio-oil can be upgraded to ethanol or even better fuels or other products,” Shahbazi says. Doing so is technically possible because crude bio-oil from hog waste is similar to crude oil pumped from ancient fossil beds beneath the earth’s surface, Xiu explains. “The process we use mimics the geological processes that created fossil fuels,” she says.

RESEARCHERSSMELLOPPORTUNITYINHOGWASTE

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“Mimics” might be something of an understatement.

The petroleum deposits that fuel our cars today were

created from millions of tons of rock, pressing down

on millions of tons of carbon-rich algae deposits over

millions of years. Xiu simulates this process in a small

room adjacent to A&T’s swine facility housing a lab-

scale Parr bioreactor. She places about a cup-and-a-half

– 750 mls. to be exact – of raw hog waste into a metal

container the size of a coffee can, flips a switch and lets

it cook. Two hours later, she retrieves a 5-ounce sample

of crude bio-oil. Not much, to be sure, but enough to run

experiments, and enough to characterize the product.

The odor of hog waste has been replaced by an acrid,

smoky smell.

The small scale of that lab simulation helps illustrate

why the challenge in biofuels nowadays is more a matter

of economics than of technology. It’s one thing to prove

the concept in a laboratory – quite another to bring

the logistics, cost of transportation and consistency of

feedstock supply up to commercial scale. Biorefineries

are very expensive to build, and one of the standards for

a viable plant is 1,000 hours of continuous production

of marketable fuels and co-products. Biorefineries also

must be within 100 miles of their feedstock supply to

be economically viable, and so far, few if any pilot plants

have managed to meet all these conditions. Shahbazi

sees one possibility vis-à-vis hog waste is to replace hog

lagoons and spray fields at the farm level with small

thermochemical processing units capable of converting

up to 1,000 gallons of hog waste at a time into crude

bio-oil. This product could then be transported to larger,

centrally located biorefineries for further processing into

transportation fuels and co-products.

“All biomass-to-biofuels technologies are facing the

same problems. So in addition to improving efficiency,

our studies are seeking to produce more marketable co-

products to make the economics work,” Shahbazi says.

IMPROVING EFFICIENCY

Researchers have been using heat and pressure

to convert biomass into biofuels for decades, but few

outside of A&T have studied its application to swine

waste, with the notable exception of the University of

Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which has made great

strides in the technology in recent years.

One of the chief advantages to thermochemical

conversion is that the raw material does not have to

undergo expensive drying in advance. Nevertheless, the

process as it stands now still uses too much energy to

make it economically feasible on a large scale, so Xiu is

hoping to improve processes further for greater efficiency

and to produce more marketable products.

Here and now is a good time to be doing so, she

says, given that North Carolina is second only to Iowa

in hog production, with approximately 15 million tons of

waste a year generated from 9.5 million pigs. Preventing

hog waste from fouling ground and surface water

continues to bedevil the industry. In order to make this

manure into an economical feedstock for biorefining,

however, the efficiency of converting it into bio-oil has to

be improved. Xiu has achieved some success in this area

by adding crude glycerin, which more than doubled the

yield of bio-oil from hog waste alone. That was exciting,

she says, because crude glycerin is a troublesome

byproduct of the biodiesel industry, which has more of

the stuff than it knows what to do with, and refining it

into a marketable glycerin is very expensive.

Xiu estimates that North Carolina could potentially

produce 67.7 billion gallons of crude bio-oil per year,

which is equivalent in volume to about 37 percent of

U.S. crude oil imports. However, the heating value of the

hog waste crude is lower than petroleum crude, so it is

difficult at this stage to make an exact volume-to-volume

comparison, she says.

FINI,XIUANDSHAHBAZIAREN’TTHEONLYONESEXCITEDABOUT

THEPROSPECTS.FOURNATIONALSCIENCEFOUNDATIONGRANTSHAVEBEENAWARDEDTOA&TTOPURSUEWASTETECHNOLOGY

FURTHER.TWOINDUSTRYPARTNERSARECOLLABORATING,ANDTHE

UNIVERSITY’SOFFICEOFTECHNOLOGYTRANSFERISALSOINTERESTEDINTHECOMMERCIALPOTENTIAL.

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CO-PRODUCTS FROM BIO-OIL

Even more profitable potential locked away in

hog waste came to light after Xiu and Shahbazi gave

some samples to Dr. Ellie Fini in A&T’s Department of

Civil Engineering.

An expert on sustainable, alternative asphalts, Fini

had approached Shahbazi soon after arriving at A&T in

2008 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,

where she had been researching sustainable adhesives.

While there, Fini became acquainted with other research

examining the potential of

soybean meal and swine

waste. She was interested in

pursuing that line of research

at A&T, and asked Shahbazi

to connect her with a source

of soybean meal.

Shahbazi was surprised.

Even if the technology could

be developed, it might be hard

to make the economics work,

he told her.

“I wouldn’t use soybean

meal,” he said. “You need to find cheaper stuff.”

He suggested trying the viscous residue left over

from his ongoing hog-waste-to-fuel conversion research.

Fini agreed, and three years later, she has published

significant data which indicates that this sticky, tarry

byproduct – a substance that few researchers had ever

given much thought to – might well be more valuable

than the biofuel itself.

The result of her work is an effective bioasphalt,

which has potential to replace or modify petroleum-based

asphalt binders used in roads, or it could also be used in

roofing shingles, carpeting and construction adhesives.

Among the list of attributes Fini reports is that the

manure-derived asphalt can withstand significantly lower

temperatures with less cracking, that it’s easier to work

with in lower temperatures and that it might be far less

costly to produce than petroleum-based asphalt binders

(at an estimated 54 cents a gallon, instead of $2). On

top of that, the product also sequesters carbon, which

is increasingly important in light of global warming and

climate change, and also in light of increasing emphasis

on sustainability in government transportation agencies

and industries. And, as if these attributes weren’t

compelling enough to merit further research, Fini also

discovered that the byproduct of bioasphalt production

contains simply a watery mixture of nitrogen, phosphorus

and potassium that could be marketed as a spray

fertilizer. Developing a bioasphalt along with biofuel and

fertilizer makes the whole process economically viable,

according to Fini.

She, Xiu and Shahbazi aren’t the only ones

excited about the prospects. Four National Science

Foundation grants have been awarded to A&T to pursue

the technology further. Two industry partners are

collaborating, and the University’s Office of Technology

Transfer is also interested in the commercial potential.

“We have 4 million miles of highways in the

country, and the maintenance costs are extremely

expensive. Extending pavement service life by reducing

the pavement cracking would be significant,” Fini said.

“We have been looking for a sustainable replacement for

petroleum-based asphalts for a long time.”

Fini points out that the bioasphalt also has a

potential role in transforming recycled roofing shingles

and reclaimed asphalt pavements into new paving

mixtures, which could be attractive to state departments

of transportation that are using reclaimed paving.

But perhaps the best opportunity lies in the

potential to transform hog waste into a profitable revenue

source while making highways safer and cheaper to

maintain. If the research pans out as hoped, a day

might come when hog producers see their costly public

relations and environmental headache become instead a

hot commodity, as eagerly traded on Wall Street as pork

bellies or heating oil.

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Shahbazi

SHAHBAZISUGGESTED

TRYINGTHERESIDUELEFTOVERFROM

HISONGOINGHOG-WASTE- TO-FUELCONVERSION

RESEARCH.FINIAGREED,ANDTHREE

YEARSLATER,SHEHASPUBLISHED

SIGNIFICANTDATAWHICHINDICATESTHISSTICKY,TARRYBYPRODUCTMIGHTWELLBE

MOREVALUABLETHANTHEBIOFUELITSELF.

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ALTHOUGH she’s barely out of her teens,

Jazmine Bowser already has a pretty good idea of

the kind of life she wants to make for herself. She

sees herself working in a corporate environment,

maybe as a financial advisor, maybe as a lawyer.

She’d like to be well-off. She “definitely” has to

live in a fast-paced city, she says with conviction.

And that’s why she majored in agricultural

economics at N.C. Agricultural and Technical

State University.

“I wouldn’t know what to do with animals or

crops,” Bowser says.

Still, she has to constantly explain to

family and friends who are thrown by the word

“agricultural” that no, she does not intend to “go

into farming,” as they assume must be the case.

So she finds herself patiently explaining for

the umpteenth time that agricultural economics

is not a career path leading to bookkeeping

for a family farm. It is instead the application

of statistics and mathematical models to the

incredibly varied and valuable products of

agriculture, whether they be fibers for clothing,

materials for housing, ethanol for transportation,

biomass for chemicals, commodities for export

– or food for feeding hundreds of millions of

Americans three times a day.

“Everything comes from agriculture,”

she says.

Analyzing trends and making informed

predictions are what appeal to her about

economics, Bowser adds. The results can help

businesses large and small make better decisions,

and help inform government policy. But because

the ag econ classroom examines real agribusiness

commodities in the here and now, she has a

better grasp of how economic models work in the

real world.

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Economics opportunityResearch scholar develops career focus while examining the economics of organic produce grown in NC.

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All these lessons have come into stronger focus

now that Bowser is studying the wholesale organic

vegetable market in North Carolina, as a participant in

the School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences’

new Undergraduate Research Scholars Program. Her

original research hypothesis has changed because

of what she found out after analyzing agricultural

databases and statistics.

What she discovered, with the help of her faculty

mentor Dr. Kenrette Jefferson-Moore, is that there is

not yet an adequate variety of organic commodities

sold in large enough numbers in the state for tracking

trends or making any meaningful conclusions about

production. That finding is already leading to new

questions, and possibly a new direction for her

research project.

“I’d like to know why sales are so low in North

Carolina; if it’s true that organic is a movement or a

rising trend,” Bowser says. “What are the numbers in

other states? How do they compare?”

Such is the dynamic nature of economics

research. Hypotheses and questions have to change

in response to real-life evidence, not follow a pre-

conceived idea or plan, she explains. But it’s OK that

her project is changing, Bowser says, because, at the

time she spoke for this article, she had more than a

year ahead of her to refine the project. Spring 2012

will see her making presentations at professional

conferences, and finally, as she prepares to graduate,

submitting an article to an academic journal in hopes

of publication.

The program is “a lot of hard work,” but worth it

in the long run, she says.

“When I get ready to apply to graduate school, I’ll

already have a leg up because I’ll be more prepared,”

she says. “You have to do research in graduate school.

I always think of the long-term benefits of taking

advantage of the opportunities I’m given now.”

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Jazmine Bowser, an agricultural economics major, examines an organically grown apple at a Greensboro grocery store during her research project on the economics of organic produce grown in North Carolina.

Jefferson-Moore

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ADRIENNE Goode, an animal sciences major and undergraduate

research scholar in A&T’s Agricultural Research Program, carefully

measures a powdery brown substance into a vial, places it in a caddy with

similar vials, and lowers the assembly into a mechanical feed digester.

These are enzymes mixed with an experimental hog feed,

she explains. And the reason she is studying them is that her

faculty mentor, Dr. Abraham Woldeghebriel, earlier that year had

discovered some interesting things about the experimental high-

fiber feed: Namely, that it promoted faster growth and more robust

health than commercial hog rations. There was also evidence that

it might have reduced the incidence of scouring (diarrhea) in pigs,

which is a costly problem for the hog industry. But that raised the

question of how to make the fiber more digestible. Enzymes could

be the answer, she says.

“We use this instrument to mimic what happens in the

animal’s digestive tract,” Goode explains. “It’s one of the scientific

techniques I’m learning here.”

Information gleaned from the laboratory process can provide

leads that will enable further studies on real animals, she says. After

collecting data from the mechanical digester, Goode will next feed

hogs at the University Farm and collect data there. Her research

observations will include growth rate

comparisons, scouring incidence and

the number of pathogenic organisms

in the digestive tracts of animals

fed the experimental feed and those

fed conventional feed. Then, along

with the other research scholars, she

will present her observations at a

professional conference. Maybe one

day, the findings could result

in better feed and healthier animals

for the benefit of the hog industry.

After all, the feeds commonly used

today were once the products of

research at a land-grant university

or U.S. Department of Agriculture

(USDA) laboratory.

AIDING INDUSTRY

Goode and Woldeghebriel

are experimenting with enzymes

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DON’T tell Kaya Feaster that

academia has no relevance to the

real world. Since experiencing a

painful inflammatory ailment, her

participation in the Undergraduate

Research Scholars Program

suddenly became very personal.

“I realized medications had

their limitations. I said, ‘There

has to be a better way.’” That

search for a better way led her

to read everything she could

about alternative treatments for

inflammation, which, in turn, led

her to take an interest in Dr. Ipek

Goktepe’s research on essential

plant oils. As it happened, Goktepe

was one of several faculty mentors

in the School of Agriculture

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Essential researchUndergrad experiments with essential oils that may combat salmonella and other foodborne pathogens.

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH SCHOLARS

PROGRAM

and Environmental Sciences who had an opening in her lab for an

undergraduate research scholar.

“Now I see how research relates to my life,” Feaster said. “This is

different experience from a lab in chemistry. Now I get to explore deeper.

Here, you get to understand the whole procedure, why you’re doing this,

and you get to see the results. You’re here all day.”

Among the skills she’s learned are how to sterilize equipment in an

autoclave, lab protocol and safety, and how to conduct a literature search,

“because you need to know what other people have already done,” she

explained. She’s also learned much about the care and feeding of bacteria.

“You want to keep it growing, or you’ll have to order more and start

over,” Feaster says. “It can really set you back.”

One day during spring semester found her testing two plant oils for

their action against E.coli, listeria and salmonella. It’s an experiment that

will play a part in Goktepe’s research project aimed at producing a wash

for consumers and food handlers to use on fresh fruits and vegetables.

The hope is that the produce wash will not only kill pathogenic microbes,

but also promote better health. Such a product would represent an

improvement over present washes that rely on chlorine to kill bacteria,

15

but can leave toxic traces behind.

Even more exciting to Goktepe and

Feaster is a forthcoming exploration to

determine if these same essential oils

could be effective in combatting cancer.

Goktepe has done preliminary studies

that show the oils are effective against

colon and breast cancer in test tubes,

and she has received funding to pursue

the work further. In her second year

as a research scholar, Feaster will run

experiments with cancer cell lines. By

her final semester, she will be prepared to

publish and report her findings.

“Undergraduate research scholars

are extremely valuable to the work we do

here,” Goktepe said.

continued next page

provided by Dyadic International, an

industrial enzymes manufacturer that

maintains a research and development

lab in Greensboro. The enzymes are used

to soften natural fiber fabrics, but after a

company representative gave a presentation

at A&T, Woldeghebriel got the idea to try

it on his experimental, high-fiber feed, to

see if it renders it more digestible. If so,

it could open a new market for Dyadic,

while also benefiting the pork industry with

an improved, digestible, high-fiber feed,

he says. That’s how research progresses,

with one idea building on another,

Woldeghebriel adds.

“I thought, well, if it works on cotton

fibers, it might work on food fibers too,”

he says.

The impetus for his and Goode’s

research comes from the growing interest

Kaya Feaster, a food sciences major, measures a sample of essential oil for her food safety research project.

Animal sciences major Adrienne Goode prepares samples for a feed digester.

Woldeghebriel

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A dirty jobUndergraduate researcher explores issues

in soil science.

IT’S 8 o’clock sharp on a cold Monday morning in

January, and Jason Shelton is already in the lab and hard

at work. He carefully lines up rows of numbered and

labeled bottles – 57 in all – each one containing about

a half teaspoon of soil, and awaiting an infusion of acid

that will remove the carbohydrates so he can measure

and study them further.

Carbohydrates, he explains, are an important

factor in gauging soil quality, because they serve as

food for microorganisms. Those microorganisms then

secrete sticky substances that stabilize soil, increase

water retention and prevent erosion. In short, the more

carbohydrates, the better the soil, says Shelton.

“The soil in these bottles is about as low in quality

as you can find anywhere,” Shelton says. “We wanted soil

like this, so that we could see what happens when you

improve it with organic matter from cover crops.”

But there’s another purpose behind today’s

experiment, he goes on to explain. It will provide data

that will help answer whether or not a new field test kit

is appropriate for measuring soil carbon. The Natural

Resources Conservation Service has asked soil scientists

across the country to test it in their regions, and he is

one of many researchers now doing so.

As one of the first Undergraduate Research

Scholars in the School of Agriculture and Environmental

Sciences, Shelton will spend the better part of his final

senior semester working on this independent research

project. After collecting data, he’ll write up his findings

and present them at a professional conference.

“When he is finished, he will know more about

this topic than me, or anyone,” says Dr. Charles

Raczkowski, Shelton’s faculty mentor in the Department

of Natural Resources and Environmental Design. “He’ll

be teaching me.”

Raczkowski explains that the reason the quality of

the soil in Shelton’s experiment is so low is that it has

been growing annual crops of corn and soybeans, and

subjected to intensive tillage with the plow and disc, at

least twice a year for 30 years or more. In other words,

it is all too typical of conventional, non-sustainable

agriculture as it has been practiced in North Carolina

and around the world for hundreds of years. Soil from

in antibiotic-free feed alternatives. For at least the

past 40 years, animals raised in close confinement

have been routinely fed small levels of antibiotics to

keep disease down, and to promote rapid growth and

efficient feed conversion. But public concerns about

antibiotic-resistant pathogens are gradually putting

a halt to the practice, and the livestock industry is

looking to researchers for alternatives that will keep

feed prices low and production high. The addition

of friendly bacteria known as probiotics has emerged

as one of the most promising alternatives. High-fiber

feed helps these bacteria flourish, which is where

Woldeghebriel and Goode’s study comes in, and where

enzymes also enter the picture. They could make the

fiber more readily available during digestion.

Dyadic currently manufactures enzymes for paper

and textile industries, but is interested in the animal

feed market as well, said Wes Lowry, applications lab

manager for the company’s Greensboro office.

“This is a nice little study,” he said. “We’re kind of

new in the animal feed market, so the kind of work you

(A&T) do there is really good for us.”

RESEARCH JOURNEY

Goode’s work, in many ways, illustrates the land-

grant university mission to conduct research for the ben-

efit of agribusiness, which is a crucial sector of the U.S.

economy. Without an affordable, safe and reliable food

system, not much else can happen in a society. In fact,

the enormous productivity of the world’s agriculture,

and the abundance of affordable food that we take for

granted today are largely owing to the research that took

place in the USDA-supported land-grant universities and

agricultural research stations over the past 150 years.

But for Goode, the undergraduate research journey

today is as much about discovering her own abilities as it

is about finding answers in animal sciences. She said the

Undergraduate Research Scholars Program has provided

a route toward realizing her long-term career goal of be-

coming a veterinarian. She’s glad she applied, and would

recommend it to other students.

“It’s exciting because it has helped me discover tal-

ents I didn’t know I had,” she says. Thanks to the new

confidence she learned in the laboratory, she says her

lifelong dream now appears within reach. By the end of

her final semester, she had been accepted to Tuskegee

University’s veterinary science program.

“This has made me want to give 100 percent,”

Goode says. “It makes me say, ‘Let me hurry up and

finish school.’ I can’t wait.”

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH SCHOLARS

PROGRAMExploring animal feed, cont.

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fields subjected to such treatment is highly erodible,

which is why soil researchers everywhere are now hard

at work experimenting with sustainable practices, such

as no-till and cover crops. The field test kit Shelton is

working on is just one piece of the puzzle.

“This way, growers would know right away what they

need to do to improve the soil,” Shelton says.

And with time running out for many of the world’s

soils, timely information is everything.

Soil may seem to be as common as dirt, but in

reality, it’s far more precious than gold. In fact, few

would argue that this humble substance is the basis for

all wealth on earth. And despite superficial appearances,

soil is not as plentiful as it seems. Like fresh water and

clean air, the soil we rely on for all our food is a finite,

nonrenewable resource, and there’s not just more where

that came from, unless you leave the ground fallow and

wait around several thousand years – which is not an

option in a world where population is expected to grow

by 30 percent in the next 40 years, to 9.1 billion.

Ten thousand years of human civilization’s plowing,

overgrazing, clearcutting and other unsustainable

practices have caused much of the world’s topsoil to

wash away into oceans. In North Carolina, many areas

in the mountains and Piedmont have seen significant

erosion and in some places soil is only a foot deep. It’s

only in recent decades that agriculturalists everywhere

have begun to turn toward sustainable practices, such as

no-till, cover crops and agroforestry, to increase organic

matter. Such practices can slow the rates of erosion by

building soil quality while rapidly improving crop yields at

the same time. Soil scientists such as Shelton are now at

the forefront of showing the world how best management

practices such as these can benefit the planet as well as

the people who inhabit it.

For now, this young scientist is mostly concerned

with finishing up his senior year and then going on for his

master’s. Soil science is a great career because it offers

the best of both worlds; it allows you to work outside, but

also exercises your intellect, he says.

His work as a research scholar is a far different

experience from lab courses in the standard curriculum,

he continues. In labs, the task is already defined, the

results are known and students simply repeat work

that has been done before. Research scholarship, on

the other hand, is original exploration directed toward

answering a real-world problem with new information

and data. Advanced laboratory procedures, calculations,

spreadsheets and the use of professional analytical

instrumentation are all part of the picture.

Challenging? Definitely. Worth it? Absolutely.

“This has been an extremely valuable experience,”

Shelton says.

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HEALTH SCIENCE’S FRONTIER

utritional science is

entering a new era, and

the Center for Excellence

in Post-Harvest Technologies, which

began full operations in 2010, is at

the leading edge. Here, scientists

are developing hypoallergenic foods,

advanced packaging technologies,

better approaches to food safety, and new natural products to prevent cancer, manage

diabetes and curb obesity. It’s all thanks to the North Carolina Research Campus,

where scientific expertise, sophisticated instruments, and a purposeful focus on

commercializing technology converge to improve health, well-being and economic growth

for the benefit of all. The Campus is a public-private partnership developed by David

H. Murdock, owner of Dole Foods. Murdock’s vision, which he announced in 2007, is

to create a world-class research hub where collaborative science will lead the charge for

great discoveries in nutrition, health and biotechnology.

OF MICE AND MILK The history of nutritional science is fairly short but, with the aid of chemistry, has

made significant advances. Back in the early 1900s, health researchers generally believed

that life processes required only four macronutrients: carbohydrates, proteins, fats and

salts. Not coincidentally, deficiency diseases such as rickets, beriberi, pellagra and scurvy

– diseases that are virtually unheard of in today’s vitamin-fortified world – were far more

common. Bodies were smaller and life spans were shorter too. The first confirmation

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N.C. A&T SCIENTISTS AT THE CENTER FOR EXCELLENCE IN POST-HARVEST TECHNOLOGIES (CEPHT) AT THE NORTH CAROLINA RESEARCH CAMPUS ARE ENGAGED IN CUTTING-EDGE PROJECTS IN THEIR QUEST TO HARNESS THE POWER IN FOOD FOR OPTIMAL HEALTH.

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Clockwise from top left: Green onions await testing in the Food Safety and Microbiology Lab; Dr. Shengmin Sang, lead scientist for functional foods, eyes a pile of raw ginger roots which contain cancer-fighting compounds; and Dr. Guibing Chen examines a sample of treated wheat bran fiber in the CEPHT food engineering lab.

that there might be more to food

than these four macronutrients

occurred when chemists figured out

a way to isolate them from milk.

Nutritional scientists then were able

to conduct dietary experiments on

rodents. They observed that those

that were fed diets composed solely

of macronutrients died without fail.

Clearly, they reasoned, there must

be something else inside food that

keeps animals alive. Along came other

scientists reporting from Southeast

Asia that people and animals there

who consumed brown rice were less

susceptible to beriberi, compared to

those who ate only polished white

rice. But it wasn’t until chemists

isolated that vital compound in brown

rice hulls that came to be known as

“thiamine,” that the word “vitamin”

was coined. The connection between

diet and disease suddenly became

clearer. Further research found 13

additional chemical compounds in

foods that are essential for life processes. This is how things stood in

nutrition for many years.

Fast forward about 100 years. Now, thanks to sophisticated

chromatography and magnetic imaging instruments such as nuclear

magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, which seem to become more

powerful every year, science is able to dig deeper into the extraordinary

complexity of food, revealing a new frontier in nutritional sciences.

Scientists are now discovering that beyond vitamins lie phytochemicals,

polysaccharides, flavonoids and thousands of other distinct compounds

that have yet to be researched. Evidence is accumulating in medical and

nutritional journals that many of these compounds have extraordinary

disease prevention and even curative effects. Combine these findings

with the emerging sciences of metabolomics, genomics and proteomics

– all of which are subjects of research at the North Carolina Research

Campus – and the Holy Grail of health science, the personalized

medical and nutritional profile, is coming within reach. As these

sciences advance so does the promise of longevity, optimal health, and

peak physical and cognitive performance. Researchers at the Campus

predict that at the current pace of research, personalized medicine

and nutrition could start appearing on the scene in 10 years and be

commonplace in 20.

COLLABORATION IS KEY The full impact of CEPHT will be realized as projects with

the other seven university partners at the Campus develop in years

to come, says Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna, CEPHT director and lead

scientist for product development and consumer research. For

instance, plant breeding for health benefits is taking place at N.C.

State’s labs, and studies on gene-nutrient interactions in those of

UNC Chapel Hill’s. Meanwhile, UNC Charlotte is specializing in

bioinformatics and N.C. Central in biomedical modeling. Sports

nutrition is the province of Appalachian State, and bioactive

compounds belong to UNC Greensboro, while Duke is delving into

translational medicine.

Food industries and agencies – including Dole Foods,

Monsanto, General Mills and USDA – also have a high-visibility

presence at the North Carolina Research Campus. Five buildings

with 800,000 square feet house all these partners, as well as Rowan-

Cabarrus Community College’s Biotechnology Training Center. Later

this year, a building housing Cabarrus Health Alliance will open, and

work will soon begin on a health care clinic. The pace of development

has been “blazing fast,” says Clyde Higgs, vice-president of business

development for the Campus, and the land-grant universities are

integral to its success.

“If you think about health research as a continuum from farm to

fork, obviously the land grant institutions of A&T and N.C. State play

a big part, whether it’s Dr. [Mary Ann] Lila at N.C. State from a plants

for human health perspective, or Dr. [Leonard] Williams at A&T, from a

post-harvest perspective,” says Higgs.

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CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS AT THE CENTER FOR EXCELLENCE IN POST-HARVEST TECHNOLOGIES

* Post-Harvest Processing of Peanut and Wheat Products to Reduce Inherent Allergens, Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna,

USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, $500,000

* Program in Food and Bioprocess Technologies for Training of Future Minority Faculty, Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna, USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, $150,000

* Food and Agricultural Byproduct-based Biochars for Enhanced Soil Fertility, Water Quality and Long-term Carbon Sequestration, Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna, USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, $300,000

* Ginger Extract: Bioavailability Study and Lung Cancer Preventive Effect, Dr. Shengmin Sang, National Institutes of Health, $361,000

CEPHT IN SERVICE As a key partner in this advanced

R&D facility, North Carolina A&T’s

Center for Excellence in Post-Harvest

Technologies plays a pivotal role.

Services for agribusiness combine

with basic and applied research. As

scientists in other university labs

develop new plant breeds, therapies

or products for robust health,

scientists with the CEPHT will be

connecting with industry partners to

develop technologies that will ensure

these new plant-based products are

stable, storable, standardized and

safe. Resources for industry include

expertise and technology for all phases

of product development, including

analyzing, engineering and stabilizing

foods and food components,

developing packaging and processing

technologies, food safety and

consumer testing.

“Our ultimate goal is new

agricultural products and functional

foods, grown and processed in North

Carolina for healthier individuals and

a thriving economy,” says Ahmedna.

* Dietary Flavonoids as Reactive Carbonyl Scavengers to Prevent the Formation of Advanced Glycation End Products, Dr. Shengmin Sang, USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, $143,000

* Pterostilbene Aspirinate as a Novel Chemopreventive Agent for Colon Cancer, Dr. Shengmin Sang, North Carolina Biotechnology Center, $75,000

* Building Capacity to Control Viral Foodborne Disease: A Translational, Multidisciplinary Approach, Dr. Leonard Williams, USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, $500,000

* Nutritional Analysis of Dried Blend Products, Dr. Leonard Williams, PreGel AMERICA Inc.,  $16,000

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t’s a typical day in the Food Safety and

Microbiology Lab at CEPHT. Bags

of bright green cilantro swimming in

nutrient broth are lined up on a counter next

to stacks of petri dishes. In a refrigerator

down the hall, boxes of spinach, alfalfa

sprouts and green onions are waiting to take

their turn on the lab bench.

Lab technicians work quickly and

quietly, extracting liquid samples and

streaking the drops onto growth media in

each dish. The dishes are stacked, loaded

into an incubator, and fingers are mentally

crossed. In the back of everyone’s mind is

the hope that nothing will grow.

Unfortunately, those hopes are

occasionally dashed. Since the lab started

operations in spring 2010, it has tested

approximately 3,000 samples from produce

grown north and south of the U.S. border

with Mexico, and about 1 to 3 percent of

those samples have come up positive for

foodborne pathogens. That percentage is a

little higher than the national average of .9

percent per year.

The extraction-incubator activity is

“surveillance source tracking,” one of the

many key strengths of the lab, explains Dr.

Leonard Williams, lead scientist for food

safety and microbiology at the CEPHT. Like

forensic detectives, he and his technicians

use the same molecular tools and techniques

as those used in certified public health labs

to find bad guys with names like “E. coli,”

“salmonella,” “listeria” and “staphylococcus.”

They hope their efforts will prevent a

foodborne outbreak before it begins. If the

samples test positive, the next step is to

contact the distribution center where the

food came from and inform the managers.

And, because it is in everyone’s best interest

to stop foodborne illness in its tracks, the

common practice is for industry management

to alert groceries, destroy the product, and

make sure the farm where the sample came

from is following what the industry refers

to as GAP – Good Agricultural Practices.

Next, the CEPHT lab conducts rapid

DNA fingerprinting to enable tracking, in

case the microbe’s fingerprint shows up

again someplace else, or is implicated in a

foodborne outbreak. Knowing the origin of a

pathogen is the way to stop foodborne illness

from spreading.

Williams points to a petri dish where

fuzzy gray spots are growing.

“Here we have salmonella, from cilantro

from a farm in Mexico,” he says.

He points to a second dish. This one

holds E. coli 0157:H7 from ready-to-eat

spinach grown on a farm in California.

A third harbors listeria, also from spinach

from the same farm in California.

Williams stresses that a healthy dose of

caution – but not alarm – is in order here.

Such results are rare, he says. Furthermore,

it is impossible to eradicate all bacteria from

foods that come out of soil. In addition, he

emphasizes that conditions in transport,

retail and home are not as conducive to

making bacteria thrive and multiply as in

a sophisticated laboratory such as this.

“If there is just one bacterium in a

sample, we’ll find it,” he says. “One organism

is not going to be pathogenic to most people.”

Nevertheless, these petri dishes,

As scientists in CEPHT’s Food Safety and Microbiology Lab track, trace and prevent

foodborne illness, they are beginning to influence trends in food safety.

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ADVANCING

FOOD SAFETY

although not reflections of real-world

conditions, still hold an important

message for consumers and industry:

Consumers need to take food safety in the

home more seriously nowadays, especially

in homes with small children, the elderly

or those whose immune systems are

compromised. Industry, meanwhile,

needs to remain vigilant, in light of an

increasingly industrialized and centralized

food system in which food from many

sources gets mixed and mingled.

Williams feels confident the nation’s

food protection system is working, but he

maintains that until deaths and illness from

food poisoning fall to zero, there is always

room for improvement and new strategies.

“Bottom line, the message we want

to drive home to consumers is they should

wash their produce when they get it home,

before they put it away,” he says. “What

we’re recommending is, wash it in a capful

of chlorine bleach in a sink full of water. It’s

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easy and everybody has bleach. Fill the sink up with water, gently agitate

for a minute. Rinse the bleach water off, dry it and then put it away.”

In addition to destroying pathogens, the practice will also

destroy spoilage bacteria, and your produce will keep longer, he adds.

Williams, along with other food safety experts, agrees that chlorine

isn’t a perfect solution, but until better ones are developed – hopefully

in his lab – it is the most cost-effective and convenient, especially for

home use. He also advocates the same advice health care professionals

give to sick and immune-compromised individuals: They should cook

or at least steam blanch their food, especially fresh produce.

“The food industry is very appreciative of what we do here,”

Williams says.

BASIC RESEARCH IN FOOD SAFETY Surveillance and source tracking for industry are just two of

the many capabilities in the Food Safety and Microbiology Lab.

Other services for industry include shelf-life stability and quality

control, microbial risk assessment, analysis of GAP for farms, and

finding new ways to process fresh produce to inactivate pathogens.

All of these functions address practical and immediate concerns and

needs of industry and consumers.

In addition to educating, advocating and researching practical

solutions – such as a project now under way to develop plant-based

23

In both photos, food safety researcher Dr. Leonard Williams examines Petri dishes containing salmonella, listeria, E. coli and other foodborne pathogens.

antimicrobial hand sanitizers – the lab is also intent on advancing basic

research. For instance, CEPHT’s capabilities and expertise in cell culturing

using human and animal cell lines is expected to add new discoveries about

how pathogens interact with hosts, as well as the complex mechanisms of

pathogen metabolism and mutation.

These are important areas for basic research, because one unfortunate

downside to developing antimicrobials is that bacteria and viruses have a

remarkable ability to quickly adapt to whatever controls humankind throws at

them, and there is little reason to believe that natural, plant-based antimicrobials

will be any different, Williams says.

“I’m not always the most popular guy in the room for pointing that out,”

he chuckles.

And so, as more functional foods emerge from other research labs at

CEPHT and the North Carolina Research Campus as a whole, Williams

and his technicians will be examining how these new products might affect

immunity to disease, or how they might prompt mutations in pathogens. The

lab is also one of the few certified Biosafety Level 3 labs in the Southeast,

which will enable it to conduct research on biohazards and potential bio-

terrorism threats.

In addition to basic and applied research, Williams helps chart a

course for new food safety practices and policies through his membership

in the Fruits and Vegetables Task Force of the International Association of

Food Protection, and the Produce Task Force of the N.C. Department of

Agriculture and Consumer Services.

ON THE CASE AGAINST NOROVIRUS CEPHT is already gaining a reputation in the safety arena. Because of

its advanced capabilities in microbiology and its connections with industry,

Williams’ food safety lab was recently named a partner, along with 10 other

land-grant and medical universities and government partners, in a $25 million

grant to investigate solutions to norovirus, the leading cause of foodborne illness

in the United States. The project is led by N.C. State University and receives

funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food

and Agriculture (NIFA).

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A stack of Petri dishes (above) ready for loading into an

incubator. In the photo to the right, Shurrita Davis eyes a

bacteria-laden sample.

Norovirus is rarely serious enough

to cause fatalities, and most people shake

off the upset stomach and diarrhea in a

day or two. Nevertheless, the virus merits

attention because it is highly contagious,

very difficult to eradicate, and spreads

quickly through hospitals and other

public settings such as nursing homes,

hospitals and cruise ships. Diligent hand

washing is currently the best-known

control strategy. The new collaborative

research team is hoping to add more

powerful controls and surveillance

technologies to the anti-norovirus arsenal.

The CEPHT’s role in the project will be

to develop plant-based antimicrobial food

sprays, and to conduct tests in real-world

industry settings of new procedures

or products that emerge during the five-

year project.

INDUSTRIALIZATION OF FOOD It’s a new era in food safety, as an

increasingly globalized and industrialized

food system spawns the potential for

more outbreaks of foodborne diseases

over wider regions. But the good news is

that although the number of outbreaks is

increasing, the number of people actually

falling sick appears to be decreasing;

that is perhaps due to increasingly

sophisticated surveillance and tracking.

The Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention reported in 2010 that each

year, approximately 48 million people

(one in six Americans) gets sick, 128,000

are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from

foodborne pathogens. That’s bad enough,

to be sure – but far better than in 1999,

when the same agency estimated the

annual rates at approximately 76 million

illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations and

5,000 deaths.

Nevertheless, mostly because of

improved surveillance such as the type

performed each day at CEPHT, each

year seems to bring higher numbers

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It’s a new era in food safety, as an increasingly globalized and industrialized food system spawns the potential for more outbreaks of foodborne diseases over wider regions.

of recalls than the year before, spurring regulators and health

agencies to stress vigilance at all levels – from farm, to distribution

centers, to grocery stores, to the kitchen sink at home. Some of the

improvements in surveillance include rapid DNA fingerprinting,

improved food labeling with bar coding, and the CDC’s national

database of pathogen DNA fingerprints known as PulseNet. Thanks

to this system, outbreaks can be identified in a matter of days or

even hours. Because of the national database, if the same DNA

fingerprint shows up in different patients, it’s clear evidence that

food from the same farm or food handler is the culprit, even if those

patients are several states apart. Williams is working toward a day

when CEPHT’s food safety lab will be government certified and part

of the PulseNet system.

CEPHT has the expertise, equipment and capability to

do so, he says, but would first need to establish a long track

record of reproducible, consistent results with thousands of samples

over several years. For now, the lab is hoping to make its mark

in new product development and studies on cutting-edge trends

such as one that recently appeared in the scientific journal Food

Protection Trends.

That study, “Epidemiological Approaches to Food Safety,”

concludes that Staphylococcus aureus appears to be the fourth

leading cause of bacterial foodborne disease outbreaks. That’s new

evidence in an increasing body of literature that suggests that staph

might need to be more closely monitored in food than it ever has

been in the past. And the study also offers new evidence that staph

needs to be added to the nation’s food safety monitoring system

“We’re hoping that public health agencies will increase

surveillance on staphylococcus. It’s important they understand it’s a

very common foodborne pathogen,” Williams says, adding, “We try

to stay ahead of the trends, and even influence the trends.”

Dr. Jianmei Yu prepares an ELISA assay to test peanut extracts for the presence of allergens.

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r. Mohamed Ahmedna,

a food chemist and lead

scientist for product

development and consumer

research at CEPHT, has been

researching peanuts at N.C. A&T

for several years, and has reported

on several potential products that

could be developed from them,

including an infant formula, low-

fat meat substitutes and powerful

antioxidants from red peanut skins.

His innovative post-harvest

technology on reduced-allergen

peanuts, however, has been the most

promising. It generated interest

in industry, media and allergy

sufferers worldwide when A&T first

announced it in 2007.

Now, a $500,000 grant to the

Center for Excellence in Post-

Harvest Technologies (CEPHT)

from the USDA is propelling the

research closer to commercialization

by funding clinical trials, consumer

testing, and an expansion of the

project into preliminary research into

wheat allergens known as “gliadins.”

“We are extremely pleased

that we will be able to move this

promising research into clinical

testing to confirm safety prior

to commercialization of treated

peanuts for the benefit of the many

children and families who every

day must deal with the stressful

condition of peanut allergies,”

Ahmedna says.

Hypoallergenic peanuts could be making a debut in a few years’ time thanks to USDA funding to conduct clinical trials, consumer testing and expand the project to include wheat allergens.

Ahmedna was originally attracted to peanut research because of his

expertise in value-added product development for crops important to North

Carolina. In addition to peanut products, he has also reported on processes

for developing antioxidants from sweet potato skins, and activated carbon

from pecan shells. “An important part of our mission here at the Center for

Excellence in Post-Harvest Technologies is to produce innovation that will

drive economic development,” he said.

LAB TESTS SHOW EFFECTIVENESS Ahmedna and Dr. Jianmei Yu, a researcher in A&T’s Food Sciences

Program, reported on the process in the August 2011 issue of the journal

Food Chemistry.

The process involves treating blanched, whole roasted peanut kernels

with two food-grade enzymes for 1 to 3 hours. Researchers ground up the

treated peanuts and produced crude extracts from the flour, which they

D

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SAFER PEANUTS CLOSER AT HAND

then exposed to antibodies sensitive to the two major allergens

in peanuts, Ara h 1 and Ara h 2. The laboratory tests, known as

ELISA assays, indicated a reduction of the two allergens to non-

detectable levels. Because the two allergens they tested for are

implicated in most peanut allergies, they served as indicators of

the treatment’s effectiveness.

“While these are good indicators of effectiveness, it does not

automatically mean you will get the same efficacy in humans that you

see in the lab. It’s important to confirm those effects in clinical tests,”

Ahmedna says.

Thanks to USDA funding, that next logical step can be

undertaken, in addition to the almost equally important step of

determining consumer acceptability of the treated product.

CLINICAL TRIALS If you had to choose just one food to keep you alive on a desert

island, you would be hard pressed to find anything better than

peanuts. Packed with proteins, healthful fats, carbohydrates, vitamins

and minerals, they are almost a nutritionally complete food. But in

one of nature’s cruel twists, this almost perfect food is also life-

threatening to growing numbers of children in industrialized nations.

The reasons are still not clearly understood, although evidence is

emerging that roasting increases the allergenicity.

“Food allergies and peanut allergies in particular have

increased remarkably in the past decade,” says Dr. David Peden of the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, who

is leading the team conducting the clinical trials.

Allergies occur when the immune system mistakes certain proteins

in foods as foes instead of friends, thus activating histamine release in the

bloodstream and kicking the inflammatory response into overdrive. The

result can be itching and rashes in mild allergic responses, or, in severe

cases, difficulty breathing and anaphylactic shock requiring emergency

medical care. Of all food allergies, Peden says, a peanut allergy is

especially troublesome because, while children often outgrow allergies

to other foods, in most cases they retain their sensitivity to peanuts

throughout life, particularly if they were exposed early in life.

Before testing the peanut extracts on humans, he and his

team will conduct histamine release tests using blood samples from

peanut-allergic individuals. Only samples of peanut extracts that show

complete inactivation of allergens in these tests will then be used in

skin-prick tests on volunteers.

“It’s a pretty safe test and biologically valid, but not as dangerous as

ingesting,” Peden said.

Avoiding peanuts is very difficult because they are so nutritious,

delicious and versatile that whole kernels and their derivatives, such as

peanut flour and oil, are favored ingredients in many processed foods.

About 75 percent of all exposures to peanuts by allergy sufferers occur

by accident.

“Our hope is that this will help food industry and individuals by

reducing the risk of accidental exposure,” says Yu.

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PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT If people do show sensitivity to

the product, Ahmedna said, the project

will still forge on, because there is

plenty of room to modify the process to

reduce allergens even more. If results

from the clinical trials are favorable,

researchers will proceed to consumer

testing at A&T’s state-of-the-art sensory

testing lab at its Greensboro campus.

Several food industries indicated

strong interest in licensing the patent-

pending process when A&T announced

the preliminary findings in 2007, but

are waiting to see results from clinical

trials first, says Wayne Szafranski,

A&T’s assistant vice chancellor for

outreach and economic development.

He adds that the project has the

potential to add considerable value to

North Carolina’s $74 billion agriculture

industry. The Tarheel state is the

nation’s fifth largest peanut producer

with 86,000 acres planted in 2010, and

peanut farmers returned $58 million to

the state in 2010.

Szafranski and Ahmedna antici-

pate that the move to commercializa-

tion could happen relatively quickly

if the clinical hurdle is surmounted,

because the process itself is affordable

and could easily be incorporated into

existing food processing lines.

If all goes as hoped, the process

is expected to be a boon to food

industries, which must take pains to

track and label for peanuts. For them,

as well as allergy sufferers worldwide,

relief could be in sight in the future.

27

Ahmedna

Scientists around the globe are

beginning to report on the potential in

biochar to address some of the world’s

most urgent problems, from world

hunger to water pollution, and even

global warming and climate change.

Biochar, or “agrichar” as it is

known when used in agriculture

as a soil amendment, is a fine-

grained, highly porous charcoal that

is produced through a simple and

well-established technology known as

pyrolysis. In this process, carbon-rich

plant materials are cooked at high

temperatures in oxygen-free cham-

bers – a procedure similar in principle

to the traditional practice of making

charcoal in smoldering earth-covered

wood piles or pits. In pyrolysis, how-

ever, the temperature and atmosphere

are controlled, which means biochar

can be produced from any soft or hard

carbon-based material, from chunks

of wood to piles of grass. It yields bits

of pure, stable carbon in volumes

from 20 to 70 percent of the original

mass. Another advantage of biochar

production is that volatile gases from

the cooking process can be used as

a carbon-neutral source of heat that

can either be cycled back to fuel the

process or used for other operations.

The process also can be modified

by introducing steam or gases to the

cooking chamber, thereby producing

so-called “designer” carbon that has

different physical and chemical prop-

erties for specific purposes, from acti-

vated carbon water or air filters used

in industry and consumer products,

to various soil amendments. There

is much room for research to come

up with new processes for specific

applications, which is where CEPHT

enters the picture.

DESIGNER BIOCHARS Supported by a grant from

USDA, Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna,

CEPHT director and lead scientist for

consumer research and product de-

velopment, will bring his experience

in value-added research and pyrolysis

technology to developing designer

biochars for agricultural uses. In

the past, Ahmedna has researched

ways to make activated carbon from

sugarcane bagasse, pecan shells,

and rice straw and hulls for various

uses – from whitening of raw sugar to

removal of harmful chemicals from

drinking water. Now he will be explor-

ing ways to make biochar from similar

materials for soil quality.

“We want to study what are the

best conditions to produce a carbon

that is most useful in addressing spe-

cific chemical and functional needs in

soil,” Ahmedna said.

Some areas of exploration

include developing biochars that

can adjust soil pH, enhance water

retention capacity, and improve

soil stability. The latter is especially

important in North Carolina and

the Southeast, where soils are highly

erodible. Ahmedna and his team will

be collaborating with researchers

at the USDA Agricultural Research

Service’s Coastal Plains Soil, Water,

and Plant Research Center in South

Carolina, experimenting with hard

and soft feedstocks such as pecan

shells, peanut shells and switchgrass.

The latter, while not a byproduct per

se, is appropriate for biochar research

because it can be produced in high

volume on marginal lands unsuitable

for other uses.

Biochar serves as an ideal

subject for value-added product de-

velopment, Ahmedna says, because

it can be made from agricultural and

food processing waste or byproducts,

and thus could transform what is

now a costly disposal problem for

industry into a valuable commodity.

The work is but one example of the

increasingly holistic and interdisci-

plinary emphasis occurring in today’s

agricultural sciences. This systems

approach is producing synergies by

ew people outside of agricultural and environmental communities

have heard much about the fine-grained charcoal known as

“biochar” – a substance similar to the activated carbon found in any

kitchen countertop water filter.

But despite its relative obscurity to the general public, this humble

material – old as fire itself – is making waves in agricultural research worldwide.

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CEPHT scientists bring expertise in value-added product development to the study of biochar.

BIOCHAR BY DESIGN

F

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Biochar from cotton gin residue

discovering, through agricultural and

life-sciences research, how all parts

of the natural world connect to the

whole ecosystem. The result is new

sustainable industries with potential

to expand the economy and improve

well-being for people and planet.

“This nonfood product develop-

ment option complements other uses

of food and agricultural byproducts

in foods and feeds, and adopts the

total system approach for sustainable

agriculture,” Ahmedna says.

BIOCHAR IN HISTORY The idea of using charcoal

as a soil amendment attracted the

attention of the world’s scientific

community about 10 years ago, when

soil scientists began writing about the

ancient and remarkably productive

manmade soil in the Amazon known

as terra preta, or dark earth. Although

many mysteries still surround exactly

how ancient civilizations created

terra preta, what is known is that

charcoal was one of its most impor-

tant ingredients.

Today, 500 years after those civi-

lizations vanished, the carbon in terra

preta remains stable and intact, and

the soils remain some of the world’s

most productive, lending support to

the belief that biochar for agriculture

could prove useful in sequester-

ing atmospheric carbon, while also

improving agricultural productivity.

Interest in biochar has since been ac-

celerating. Governments are funding

research; journal articles and even

textbooks are written on the subject,

and international biochar confer-

ences are held to share findings. Both

New Zealand and the United King-

dom have research centers dedicated

solely to biochar research.

CLIMATE CONNECTION In order to understand how

biochar could theoretically mitigate

global warming and climate change,

we have to recall the basic principles

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ABof nature’s carbon cycle from our school years. As we learned then, all

plants take in atmospheric carbon as they grow and respire, and then

return that carbon to the atmosphere after they die and decay or are

burned. Now, due to increasing use of fossil fuels, plant carbon that

was sequestered for millions of years underground is being released at a

higher rate than present-day plant life on earth can absorb. The result is

an excess of atmospheric carbon, a greenhouse gas that traps the sun’s

heat, causing global warming and a resulting shift in ocean tempera-

tures and currents that are contributing to climate change.

Now that the tipping point that scientists warned the world

about for the past 30 years has been reached, the impact is becom-

ing more evident every year. Deadly weather extremes are worsening.

The world is experiencing increased heat and more droughts in the

growing seasons, and more severe cold in winters. Evidence points

to widespread droughts, famines, diseases, water shortages and crop

failures that show signs of accelerating over the next 100 years, unless

humankind discovers the will or the way to slow or reverse the trend.

Because pyrolysis locks plant carbon in a very stable form, biochar

production is one of the few known technologies that is carbon nega-

tive, which, by itself, makes it worth heightened attention. Add to

that characteristic the potential to expand the global economy, and it’s

easy to see why scientists and governments worldwide are increasingly

interested in researching it. If produced on a massive enough scale

worldwide, biochar could, in theory, serve as an economically produc-

tive carbon sink.

Because of their expertise in agricultural systems, USDA and the

nation’s land grant universities are better suited than any other public

or private research entity anywhere to address global climate change

and other monumental challenges facing the 21st century. Mean-

while, funding agencies and the private sector are directing more and

more resources toward the green industries of the future that will

provide answers.

KNOWLEDGE GAPS It has long been known that carbon can improve soil quality, and

growers are constantly seeking new and better ways to get more of it

into their soils, from composting, to cover crops, and now, through

incorporating biochar in fields. In preliminary studies from around the

world, scientists are beginning to report that biochar can significantly,

even dramatically, improve crop yields. Still, many questions remain.

Despite promising new data and observations about terra preta,

the science of biochar is still new, and little is known about exactly

how the substance would function in different soils and climates

over the short- and long-term. Will the productivity be as dramatic in

soils that are chemically and biologically different from those in the

Amazon? Will the microbial activity be different? Could carbon from

biochar-treated soils cumulatively release into the atmosphere years

down the road, inflicting on the world a rapid surge of greenhouse

gases? Questions such as these underscore the need for research,

Ahmedna says.

“This is a really new area for agricultural science and something

we don’t have all the answers for yet.”

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crushed them with ultrafine grinders,

all with varying degrees of success.

Dr. Guibing Chen, lead

scientist of the Food Engineering,

Processing and Packaging Lab

at the Center for Excellence in

Post-Harvest Technologies, thinks

a better answer for the future could

lie in some of the new tools that are

now being used in nanotechnology.

The technique he is experimenting

with, known as microfluidization,

forces streams of particles in a liquid

suspension at jet propulsion speeds

through a tube about 100 microns

in diameter – about the diameter

of a human hair. When it emerges,

the material experiences a sudden

pressure drop and produces minute

particles that, while quite a bit bigger

than nanoparticles, are tiny enough

to be undetectable in foods.

“This is a very new technology

for food, and one that we think will

deliver more fiber-enriched products

to consumers,” Chen says.

Fiber deserves this much

attention because the well-

documented health benefits include

reducing cholesterol and lowering

the risks of diabetes and coronary

heart disease. In fact, the American

Heart Association recommends

adults eat 25 grams of fiber per day.

Unfortunately, most people choose

foods based on taste and texture,

and for 100 years or more, food

processors have been responding

to consumer preferences for

smoother textured white rice and

white bread, thereby removing all

or most of the outer bran layers

of grains. Many of the B vitamins

and minerals are contained in this

outer layer. Considering that a cup

of brown rice contains just 3.5

grams of fiber, it’s easy to see why

most Americans get only about

half the recommended amount

in a typical day. Food industries

strive to add more, but for most

people, high fiber products are

just too unpleasant, no matter how

much food processors endeavor to

compensate with flavorings, sugar

or salt.

“The reason is that raw fiber

is poorly compatible with food

matrices,” Chen says. For example,

he explains, bran fibers break apart

the stretchy gluten proteins that

make bread rise, thus rendering

whole wheat bread denser than

white bread. Microfluidization

alters the chemical and physical

properties of fibers, minimizing their

negative effects and, Chen believes,

providing a bonus in the form of

better health benefits.

Some preliminary studies in his

lab showed that treated wheat bran

had more than three times the total

antioxidant activity of untreated

bran. Chen thinks that ratio is due

to the increased accessibility of the

antioxidant compounds that are

originally bound tightly to the bran

fiber matrix. Now he’s hoping to test

the effects in animal models and

develop high-fiber food products

by working with food chemists and

product development researchers at

the Center.

MICRO-TECHNOLOGIES FOR MAXIMUM HEALTH

ost consumers

nowadays know that

dietary fiber is good

for them, and food

industries are doing their best to

put more of the stuff in everything

from snack crackers to breakfast

cereals. But getting people past the

unpleasant gritty texture continues

to be a marketing and consumer-

acceptance hurdle.

The goal of getting the right

amounts of fiber – amounts that

deliver health benefits that at the

same time aren’t detectable to

the palate – in breads, breakfast

cereals and other baked goods has

stumped the food industry for years,

and prompted food engineers to

experiment with a dizzying array of

modification technologies. They’ve

treated food fibers with acids and

alkalis. They’ve exposed them to

enzymes or sodium hydroxide.

They’ve heated them up, then

crammed them through extruders or

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Engineering lab improves food quality with microfluidization.

COMMERCIAL HURDLES Palatable fiber is just one of the capabilities of CEPHT’s Food

Engineering, Processing and Packaging Lab. Its focus is on using modern

tools of food engineering to make good on the Center’s overarching mission

of making healthier food products commercially viable. And so, while

scientists in the Functional Food Lab are finding new ways of purifying

the health-promoting phytochemicals in plants or new plant-based anti-

microbial food sanitizers, or developing hypoallergenic peanuts, they are

creating new challenges in food engineering – namely, how to stabilize

these new products so they will withstand the rigors of processing,

transport and storage.

That is where Chen’s food engineering lab enters the picture and where

yet another micro-technology is coming into play. Chen is now experimenting

with a technology known as microencapsulation, to find out if the technology

can stabilize the fragile compounds that are under development in Dr.

Guibing Sang’s Functional Foods Lab and in Dr. Leonard Williams’ Food

Safety and Microbiology Lab. Microcapsules are edible sugar containers, a

fraction of the width of a human hair, that are undetectable in food. They

encase and stabilize any liquid active ingredient that would otherwise degrade

very quickly. They can also be engineered for slow or timed release, which is

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MICRO-TECHNOLOGIES FOR MAXIMUM HEALTH

expected to be especially helpful in

the Food Safety and Microbiology

Lab’s work on plant-based

antimicrobial food sprays.

Chen’s food engineering lab

also has capabilities to develop

other advanced packaging

technologies for industry, including

modified atmosphere packaging.

The lab also conducts mathematical

modeling and food analysis for

industries, as well as research

and development in the areas of

retort sterilization of canned foods,

ultrasound processing, freeze

drying, extrusion and many other

processing technologies.

As the Center continues to

make new discoveries, collaboration

and industry partnerships will be

critical to delivering on the mission

of solving human health problems

for the benefit of consumers,

agribusiness and the economy, say

Chen and the other lead scientists

at the Center.

“Our role as food engineers

is not only basic research,” Chen

says. “We do more applied

research with the purpose of

commercializing products for the

benefit of human health.”

31

Dr. Guibing Chen, lead scientist for food engineering, selects a chemical used in his wheat bran research.

hey say the best cure is prevention. If research at the Center

for Excellence in Post-Harvest Technologies (CEPHT) pans

out, and if industry takes an interest in developing new

products from its discoveries, compounds isolated from ginger, wheat

bran, tea, and other common foods could one day prevent disease

with minimal or no side effects.

Dr. Shengmin Sang, lead scientist for functional foods at

CEPHT, is particularly optimistic about the potential of ginger,

wheat bran and soy to counter two of society’s worst health scourges:

cancer and diabetes.

GINGER AND CANCER A pungent, underground rhizome that is used either fresh or dried

as a spice, ginger is usually associated with Asian cuisine or baked

goods, and ginger ale has long been recognized as an effective home

remedy for nausea. Now, studies worldwide are beginning to show

it also strongly inhibits many cancers, including some of the worst:

ovarian, pancreatic and, as Sang has discovered, lung cancer cells.

While findings in laboratories are already offering compelling

evidence that suggests people could benefit by making ginger a

regular part of their diets, the real power of the spice will come from

isolating the compounds that confer the most health benefits and

using them in functional foods, supplements, or as base chemicals

in pharmaceuticals. That’s where post-harvest technology and Sang’s

Functional Foods Lab enter the picture.

Prior to Sang’s work, researchers have been mainly interested in

the gingerol compounds in the spice for their strong anti-inflammatory

and immune stimulating properties. But Sang has moved well beyond

gingerols, turning his focus on a less prevalent, but potentially more

active compound in ginger known as shogaol, a compound formed

when the spice is heated or dried. Little had been known about it

because purifying large enough quantities for further study had always

been a challenge. In 2009, Sang developed a method to do so. Now,

having surmounted that challenge, he is making discoveries that could

bring even more attention to ginger.

“Very few people have looked at shogaols,” he said.

Recently, with research made possible with National Institutes

of Health funding, Sang discovered that shogaols kill lung cancer

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FUNCTIONAL FOODS FOR DISEASE PREVENTION

cells in-vitro (in test tubes). Encouraged

by those findings, he is now developing a

process to synthesize it so he can make

it in larger quantities for further tests in

CEPHT’s tissue culture lab, and then in

animal models.

Sang has also discovered a novel

compound in wheat bran that inhibits

colon cancer. That’s further evidence

of an emerging theory that it is the

phytochemicals in fiber, instead or in

addition to the physical properties of

fiber, that confer the anti-cancer effects.

His discovery was made possible by

powerful nuclear magnetic resonance

(NMR) spectroscopy at the David

Murdock Research Institute in the

Campus’s core lab – not to mention

Sang’s own ability to decipher the 50-plus

pages of data that the instrument yielded.

“It’s hard work, but for me, it’s fun

to figure out these chemical structures,”

he says.

Sang’s activity on this front

illustrates the extraordinary and rare

combination of synergies available at

the Center. He and other scientists at

CEPHT not only have strong chemistry

backgrounds, but also strong biological,

engineering and even business expertise.

This combination of talents, together

with ready access to every advanced

tool available to food science, will

make it possible for them to make

rapid progress in taking research from

start to finish. CEPHT’s capabilities

include isolating, characterizing and

purifying active compounds from raw

foods, confirming health and safety

effects using animal models, developing

packaging and processing technologies,

conducting consumer testing, and

working with industry to commercialize

innovations so consumers can reap the

benefits. Depending on the product,

clinical trials and Food and Drug

Administration approvals could come

into the picture. Partnerships available

at the North Carolina Research Campus

provide additional synergies that enable

expansion beyond CEPHT expertise.

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32

Natural plant compounds show promise in managing and preventing disease.

17

“The Campus integrates basic

and applied research and product

development dedicated to the nexus of

agricultural products and human health,

bringing public and private institutions

under the same roof. You don’t see that

often in science,” says Dr. Mohamed

Ahmedna, director of CEPHT and lead

scientist for product development and

consumer testing.

TACKLING DIABETES Chefs call a certain process that takes

place in cooking the “Maillard Reaction.”

We have it to thank for the golden crust

on fresh-baked bread, and the delectable

brown glaze that forms on the outside of

meat as it grills. Chemically speaking,

it’s what happens when sugar and amino

acid proteins in foods combine under

the intense heat of cooking. Much of the

pleasure we all derive from eating just

wouldn’t be the same without it.

But alas, as with so many savory

enjoyments in life, there’s a downside.

Chemical products of the reaction are not

healthful, and something very similar to

this reaction in the kitchen also occurs in

the human body. This is especially so in

people with high blood sugar and diabetes.

The reaction of sugar with proteins in blood

creates so-called “advanced glycation end

products” or AGEs, which are the real

culprits in diabetes. It is these chemical

end products that are responsible for the

retinopathy, kidney failures and circulatory

system problems that make diabetes such a

devastating condition.

Sang has isolated, characterized and

purified flavonoid compounds in soy, tea,

apples and onions that can trap these

harmful end products in the bloodstream.

It doesn’t mean a cure, but it could present

an opportunity for managing diabetes,

Sang says. Encouraged by test tube results,

his next plan is to move the research into

animal testing.

“Our strategy is to prevent the

formation of these compounds and

therefore delay or prevent diabetic

complications,” he says.

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THE FUTURE OF PERSONALIZED NUTRITION The combination of biological and chemical expertise at CEPHT is

one reason Sang’s ultimate goal – the personalized nutrition profile – is no

pipe dream. Until recently, the best tools science had for understanding the

connection between diet and disease were epidemiological studies. Such

studies are notoriously inaccurate because they involve interviews with

many thousands of people over many years about what they eat, how much

and how often. Accuracy depends on how well people recall, how truthful

they are, and how good they are at estimating portion size. Those results

are then correlated with incidence of disease across the same population.

Such studies have always been acknowledged as imperfect tools, but the

best available. Until now. Advances in science now make it possible to test

body fluids to determine metabolic activity. This yields more solid, scientific

evidence of what was eaten and when. As that information accumulates and

is sorted with databases containing genetic information, the potential for

individualized nutrition will be possible.

“A doctor or nutritionist would be able to tell you what to eat, and

what to avoid in order to prevent disease based on your genetic profile,”

Sang says.

Medical scientists elsewhere at the North Carolina Research

Campus are combining genomics, proteomics and metabolomics in hopes

of developing personalized medical treatments. Scientists at CEPHT and

the Campus say at current rates of progress, personalized nutrition and

medicine might debut in 10 years.

Meanwhile, Sang keeps his focus on the present; his hopes on

the future.

“Our mission,” Sang says, “is the mission of the campus: to develop

functional food for disease prevention and personalized nutrition.”

33

Dr. Shengmin Sang, lead scientist for functional foods, holds a flask of ginger extract.

The compound above is one of 14 chemicals that Dr. Sang purified from wheat bran, and found to inhibit colon cancer cells in lab tests.

Building CapacityRe

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INTERDISCIPLINARY PH.D. PROGRAM IN FOOD AND

BIOPROCESS TECHNOLOGIES FOR TRAINING OF FUTURE

MINORITY FACULTY

Principal Investigator: Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna

This project will lay the groundwork for establishing a new

Ph.D. program in food and bioprocess engineering. Objectives

include writing a proposed curriculum, securing approval for

the program, enrolling and mentoring new Ph.D. students

and strengthening infrastructure for long-term sustainability.

The project has the potential to increase the numbers of

minority Ph.D. scientists who enter the food sciences field.

BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING LABORATORY FOR

TEACHING AND RECRUITING AGRICULTURE MAJORS

Principal Investigator: Dr. Manuel Reyes

The project was inspired by the growing demand

for professionals in “green” industries. Funds are

being used to develop a curriculum and materials to

educate 12 undergraduate biological engineering

students in sustainable planning and landscaping

methods, and to establish a learning laboratory

at Sockwell Hall to serve as a site for workshops

on sustainable landscape design. A landscape

design that serves as a laboratory has

been developed around the building and is

undergoing continual upgrading. Students are

learning research methods to measure how the

new approach increases biodiversity, water and

soil quality, and saves money.

34

THANKSTO$4MILLIONINFUNDINGFROMTHEUSDACAPACITYBUILDINGGRANTSPROGRAM,researchers,

ExtensionandteachingprofessionalsintheSchoolofAgriculture

andEnvironmentalSciencesatA&Thavebeenbuilding

infrastructuretomeetsomeofthemostpressingsocialand

economicchallengesfacingNorthCarolina.Seventeenprojectsfundedunder

thiscompetitivenationalprogramarenowactiveintheSAES.Thefollowingisa

summaryofupdatesontheseprojects,whicharecontributingtoA&T’smissionas

aland-grantuniversitytodeliverqualityeducation,outreachandresearchforthe

benefitofconsumers,agribusinessandcommunities.

N.C. A&T research on goat parasites is aiding the fastest growing livestock industry in North Carolina.

ENHANCING COMMUNICATION, DESIGN AND CRITICAL

THINKING SKILLS OF STUDENTS THROUGH PROBLEM

SOLVING AND GIS APPLICATION IN NATURAL RESOURCES

Principal Investigator: Dr. Godfrey Gayle

In appreciation of the critical role water will play in

achieving global food security and ending hunger, this

project focuses on teaching undergraduate biological

engineering students modern computer modeling tools

that are used in hydrology and soil and water conservation.

New computers and Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

software are being purchased, and students are starting to

learn the technology by applying it in real-life scenarios.

DEVELOPING A GLOBAL CAMPUS FOR THE SCHOOL

OF AGRICULTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Principal Investigator: Dr. Anthony Yeboah

A study-abroad program and online undergraduate

agribusiness degree program are being established under

this project, with the overarching goal of better preparing

students to understand global agricultural economics.

PREPARING UNDERGRADUATE AND SET (SCIENCE,

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY) 4-H STUDENTS FOR THE

GLOBAL WORKPLACE THROUGH ENHANCED TECHNOLOGY

Principal Investigator: Dr. Jane Walker

Three laboratories in the Department of Family and

Consumer Sciences are getting upgrades to better meet

the educational needs of professionals and industries

that employ them. In addition to renovations, the food

and nutritional sciences, apparel design and textiles and

computer-aided design (CAD) laboratories will be updated

with new equipment and software. Faculty are being

trained in the new software. In addition, a 4-H science,

engineering and technology summer outreach program

will be developed.

DEVELOPING SUSTAINABLE PASTURE-BASED LIVESTOCK

EXTENSION EDUCATION TOOLS FOR INTEGRATED USE

Principal Investigator: Dr. Niki Whitley

In an effort to meet demand for healthier, grass-fed

livestock and improve opportunities for small farmers in

North Carolina, this project will fund three demonstration

sites and educational tools and materials to train

producers, Extension agents, veterinarians and others

interested in sustainable production of goats and sheep.

FOOD AND AGRICULTURAL BYPRODUCT-BASED

BIOCHARS FOR ENHANCED SOIL FERTILITY AND

LONG-TERM CARBON SEQUESTRATION

Principal Investigator: Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna

This research project will add value to food and agricultural

byproducts by transforming them into “designer”

biochars that will improve agricultural productivity while

sequestering carbon. Biochars are carbon-rich products

produced by burning biomass in the absence of oxygen.

They have emerged as one of the few materials in the

world that can potentially slow global warming and

climate change by serving as long-term carbon sinks.

DEVELOPMENT OF INTEGRATED FOOD PROTECTION AND

DEFENSE EDUCATION AND EXTENSION PROGRAM FOR

STUDENTS AND PROFESSIONALS IN 1890 UNIVERSITIES

Principal Investigator: Dr. Salam Ibrahim

Food safety and protection are the ultimate goals of this

food safety project, which will create a new five-course

curriculum in food protection and defensive measures at

A&T that emphasizes protecting food from bioterrorism.

The project leaders will then develop a working model for

teaching food protection and defense at the other 1890

land-grant institutions.

35

Tao Wang, a post-doctoral research associate at the Center for Excellence in Post-Harvest Technologies, performs a lab procedure to measure the antioxidant activity of wheat bran that has undergone microfluidization, a process that can increase antioxidant activity by up to three times while rendering the fiber more palatable.

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Building CapacityA REACTIVE DISTILLATION PROCESS FOR UPGRADING

BIO-OIL TO TRANSPORTATION FUELS AND BIOPLASTICS

Principal Investigator: Dr. Lijun Wang

Led by N.C. A&T, research teams at Stony Brook

University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

are investigating a novel reactive distillation process

for upgrading crude bio-oils produced from animal

wastes, municipal solid wastes and agricultural

residues into transportation fuels and biodegradable

plastics. Two graduate students and one undergraduate

student are gaining hands-on education in bioprocess

engineering research. The A&T team has developed

a thermochemical process to convert swine manure

and agricultural residues into bio-oils. The team has

also designed a reactive distillation unit that is under

construction at the A&T University Farm. The unit

will be used to further research into how to refine

the crude bio-oils into transportation fuels and

biodegradable plastics. Sustainable, renewable bio-

energy and sustainable rural economies are being

addressed in this project. After developing the process,

it will be analyzed for its economic viability at different

scales. In the process, it is educating students in bio-

energy production.

AN INTEGRATED PROCESS FOR PRODUCTION

OF ETHANOL AND BIO-BASED PRODUCTS

FROM LIGNOCELLULOSIC BIOMASS

Principal Investigator: Dr. Lijun Wang

N.C. A&T is leading research teams from Ohio State,

Purdue and the University of Florida in developing

technologies to produce biofuels and biobased products

from biomass. Four graduate and three undergraduate

students at A&T have been educated in bioprocess

engineering, thus preparing them for careers in this

promising new agricultural industry. The research

achievements under this project so far include: (1)

establishing a technical procedure to characterize the

physical and chemical properties of biomass materials;

(2) establishing a procedure to quantify the supply

economics of biomass feedstock; (3) perfecting methods

to enhance the enzymatic hydrolysis and cellulosic

ethanol fermentation; (4) developing a process to

improve the synergetic fermentation of ethanol from

glucose and acetic acid from xylose; and (5) developing

and refining a pyrolysis process to convert fermentation

residues to activated carbon.

INTEGRATED RESEARCH AND OUTREACH INTERVENTION

TO PREPARE SMALL-SCALE PRODUCE FARMERS IN

NORTH CAROLINA FOR UPCOMING TRACEABILITY

REQUIREMENTS

Principal Investigator: Dr. Ipek Goktepe

Food safety is the focus of this project, which will

aid small producers and health professionals in

tracing fruits and vegetables as they move through

the distribution chain from farm to consumer. The

project examines the voluntary barcode and labeling

system that is used by large producers for tracing

foods. This system is effective in halting the spread of

foodborne pathogens, but expensive and cumbersome

for small producers. This project team will enroll

small farmers in a pilot study to examine the costs

of implementation and impact, while also providing

training in the technology. The outcome is expected to

be recommendations appropriate for small farmers.

PROMOTING HEALTHY LIFESTYLES THROUGH

SMART KITCHEN LABORATORY DESIGN

Principal Investigator: Dr. Valerie L. Giddings

The goals here are long-term solutions to the nutritional

needs of families, and addressing childhood obesity.

A “smart kitchen” and food preparation laboratory

for Family and Consumer Sciences students will be

constructed with teaching and learning stations. A

database of recipes, dietary standards and nutritional

assessments will be developed in order to improve

the capacity of the department to better prepare

students for careers in nutritional sciences, and family

and consumer sciences education. The food and

nutritional sciences curriculum at A&T will incorporate

the database technology to better prepare students.

Workshops for community groups will be held to

teach kitchen technology for quality meal preparation,

and graduates and undergraduates will use the new

technology for research projects.

ENGAGING LIMITED-RESOURCE AUDIENCES TO

PROMOTE BEST AGROFORESTRY PRACTICES IN

NORTH CAROLINA

Principal Investigator: Dr. Joshua Idassi

Agroforestry, which is the practice of growing income-

producing trees together with food crops, has the

potential to create new economic opportunities for

small-scale farmers in North Carolina. Consequently, the

36

Building Capacityproject team is developing an agroforestry curriculum to

educate Extension agents in the practice, and is planting a

demonstration site to exhibit agroforestry techniques.

ENHANCEMENT OF GRADUATE STUDENT

RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION IN FOOD,

AGRICULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES.

Principal Investigator: Dr. M.R. Reddy

Eighteen students from under represented groups

were recruited into graduate programs in the School

of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. Graduate

assistantships were offered and the students were trained

in research techniques and skills. Linkages were established

with four-year colleges and universities in North Carolina,

Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania. The graduate

students attended professional meetings and presented

papers at regional and national professional meetings. An

SAES graduate program website is being developed.

RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION STRATEGIES FOR

EDUCATING STUDENTS FOR SUCCESSFUL CAREERS

Principal Investigator: Dr. Kenrett Jefferson-Moore

A new weeklong residential summer enrichment

program and curriculum for high-school students who

are interested in agribusiness careers was piloted in 2010,

refined in 2011, and is now established. In addition, a

group of A&T students were identified as future leaders

in agribusiness, and traveled to the annual Agriculture

Future of America (AFA) Leaders Conference in Kansas

City, Mo. Marketing materials were developed, and an

organized system was adapted for advising new freshmen

and sophomores within the department. Additional

recruitment strategies for attracting “millennials” into

food and agribusiness industries is being developed.

BIOCONTROL AND HURDLE TECHNOLOGY TO

ENHANCE MICROBIAL SAFETY OF FRESH PRODUCE

Principal investigator: Dr. Ipek Goktepe

The results of this study suggest that naturally occurring

bacteriophages may be useful in reducing E. coli 017:H7

contamination on lettuce and spinach at refrigerated

temperatures, as well as reducing listeria and salmonella

on fresh produce. Therefore, researchers suggest that the

approach of using bacteriophages to reduce contamination

of foods by bacterial pathogens may be an effective natural

approach to eliminate foodborne diseases without leaving

harmful residues in treated products.

FRUITS AND VEGETABLES IN OBESITY REDUCTION VIA

INTERACTIVE TEACHING AND EXPERIMENTS (FAVORITE)

Principal Investigator: Dr. Mohamed Ahmedna

Researchers took on childhood obesity by asking if

play could increase children’s acceptance of fruits and

vegetables. The team assembled commercially available

food-related games and toys, and developed new play

activities as well. Data were collected from observations

and questionnaires with 124 preschool children and

parents at three different schools. Researchers reported a

25 percent and 20 percent increase in children’s liking of

fruits and vegetables, respectively, immediately following

the pilot play program. While the nutrition-educational

intervention showed more impact among children of

low socioeconomic status, the ability of children to learn

appeared to be independent of socioeconomic status, and

was enhanced by hands-on interactive learning activities.

Children at age 4 were the most receptive and most

impacted by the nutrition education interventions, leading

the study team to suggest this age group would be ideal

for early education interventions aimed at long-lasting

change in dietary habits.

Dr. Jimo Ibrahim, a specialist with The Cooperative Extension Program, displays a crawfish during a demonstration of integrated crawfish and rice farming at the University Farm’s 2011 Small Farms Field Day.

Re:

A magazine of the Agricultural Research Program in the

School of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University

Re:information raczkowc@ncat.edu

Jason Shelton, an undergraduate research scholar, examines a soil sample during field work for his research on soil quality. Shelton reported that crimson clover and rye cover crops can help prevent erosion as they decompose, thus adding more carbohydrates to the soil and thereby feeding microorganisms. Cover crops, agroforestry and no-till are some of the sustainable agricultural practices getting attention from A&T’s Agricultural Research Program.

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