Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

The meeting was hosted by the University of Hawaii and held at Ala-Moana Hotel, Honolulu, HI, October 2-4, 2011. Dr. Soojin Jun served as the local host. The following is a brief summary of annual meeting. " Sunday, October 2nd: The group met for dinner. Announcements related to activities next day were made. " Monday, October 3rd : 8:00am V.M. (Bala) Balasubramaniam NC1023 Chair: Welcomed the participants and presented agenda items for the next two days. Minutes were taken by Secretary Fernanda San Martin-Gonzalez. Meeting host Soojin Jun welcomed everyone and introduced Dr. Kenneth Grace, Interim Associate Dean for Research at the University of Hawaii. Meeting participants introduced themselves. Participants were able to interact with remote participants including various USDA national program leaders via Adobe connect, internet based software hosted by Dr. Hongda Chen, NIFA Kenneth Grace, Interim Associate Dean for Research University of Hawaii: Welcomed the attendees and mentioned that one of the greatest challenges faced by Agriculture in Hawaii is the shipment of agricultural products to mainland. In this regard, he mentioned that the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources spends considerable effort coaching producers in Food Safety related issues. Meeting participants introduced themselves David Jackson, NC1023 Administrator Advisor: Introduced himself as Associate Dean of Research at the University of Nebraska and is the Administrative Advisor for the Multistate Project. He provided an update of some administrative changes and emphasized the importance of thoughtfully reporting Impact Statements due in November 2011. He requested that impact statements should be quantitative and made in terms of The economic, social, health or environmental consequences derived as benefits for the intended users. The committee has to prepare a 2 page long document that outlines future research needs and the type of impact they will have in the future. The committee also has to compile 2 years of annual reports with a statement and evidence of external funding, examining the future of funding and compile evidence of external funding that is collaborative in nature. He recommended that for the next year the committee should identify some specific impacts and quantify funding used for collaborations and leveraging. He suggested to include funded projects as well as attempted to get funding, and a statement about how expertise was leveraged. Dr. Hongda Chen, National Program Leader: He introduced Dr. Robert Holland (from University of Tennessee) as the new leader for the Institute of Food Safety and Nutrition. Dr. Robert Holland Assistant Director of Institute of Food Safety and Nutrition (IFSN), NIFA. Update: Currently assembling AFRI RFAs writing. They are under considerable budget constraints although they do not have the budget yet. It will be discussed or resolved later today or this week. Travel will be greatly reduced next year. They will be looking at more innovative ways to conduct meetings and panel reviews. They have assembled taskforce reviews to contribute information of the processes. He will chair competitive taskforce to look at foundational programs. They will also do a portfolio review. This is required by the Presidential Administration on how they conduct business, execute programs, etc. Two important tasks: How they function and interface with colleagues. The AFRI annual synopsis is available online: http://www.nifa.usda.gov/funding/pdfs/2010_afri_synopsis.pdf Dr. Hongda Chen, National Program Leader, Washington and USDA-AFRI update: Washington updates on AFRI updates: A chart with the new leadership was presented. There are two new divisions: Division of Nutrition with Dionne Toombs and Division of Food Safety with Janet Singleton as the Division Directors. The vision of NIFA is Leading Food and Agricultural Sciences to create a better future for the nation and the world. The focus of Dr. Holland and Institute of Food Safety and Nutrition is in the thematic areas 3. Food Safety and 4. Nutrition and childhood obesity. Budget situation: FY 2011 0.2% rescission $1362 M FY 2012 Presidential Budget $1371 M, House action with 0.78% rescission FY 2012 Awaiting Senate Committee Action AFRI Budget: FY 2010 appropriation $262M FY 2011 appropriation $264M FY 2012: Presidents Budget $324M, House floor action: $223M, Senate Committee Action $266M Challenge areas: Food Safety Challenge: $20M Food Processing Technology: 3 awards at $1M per year. Total $15M. Several years ago there was a workshop to identify research gaps and opportunities to develop research into commercial applications. In FY 2010 there was a call for proposal to address these issues. Proposals needed to demonstrate true partnerships between academe, government and food industry. They funded 3 projects: Yen-Cong Hung (U of Georgia), Haiqiang Chen (U. Delaware), Juming Tang (Washington State). All these projects are collaborative and multistate. Rakesh Singh proposed to have a symposium on early stages of these projects to involve food scientists and community. Ideas on how to make the projects most effective are welcomed. He presented the nanotechnology programs in the foundational program for FY2010 and FY2011. The program in FY2010 funded 8 projects at $3.5 million. Five of the PDs are engineers. There was a joint solicitation in FY2010 with EPA and NSY with the focus on increasing data on fate, transport and behavior of engineered nanomaterials in selected environmental and biological matrices. The program funded fourteen projects of a total of $7.2M, in which NIFA/AFRI funded four projects at a total of $2.2M. The FY2011 nano panel has completed and recommended funding. One of the eight projects is related to food bioactive delivery systems. Dr. Jody Williams Food Safety. NIFSI, AFRI-Improved Processing Technologies, SBIR. NIFSI: Support projects that use an integrated approach to solving problems in Food Safety. Projects should include at least two of the three components: education, extension and research. Priority Areas: Training for retailers, producers and consumers. Safety of fresh and fresh cut fruits, trace backs systems, pathogens, antimicrobial resistance, new technologies. This year, 111 proposals were received. The panel met in August, 15 proposals included processing, out of the 17 proposals recommended for award, one proposal was in the area of processing. Funds will be distributed through Standard, Bridge, Conference Grants and Special emphasis. AFRI-Improved Processing Technologies focused on new methods to characterize and analyze complex food matrices to address storage. 78 proposals were received, 12 proposals were recommended for funding, and of those, 11 were in processing. SBIR: Commercialize useful new food products. Many of the SBIR are collaborations with university. Phase 1: $100,000 (Proof of concept) Phase 2: $500,000 (Real testing phase) Commercialization phase: no agency funding. Proposals were due on September, the panel will meet in January or February 2012 and announcements will be made in May. Dr. Jeanette Thurston Food Safety. Several grant programs focused on Food Safety. Specialty Crops (SCRI) opportunities for food safety. Food safety: 1. Food Safety Challenge Area Program (Multidisciplinary) 2010: 20M; $100M committed 2011: $7M; $15M to be committed 2012: Unknown at the time of the meeting 2. Food Safety Foundational 2010: $8M 2011: $2M 2012: Unknown at the time of the meeting Food Safety Challenge Area: Multidisciplinary area to solve complex food safety problems by combining basic and applied research. In 2011, there was less funding than in 2010. Program priorities focused on Salmonella in poultry and addressing critical and emerging food safety issues. Deadline for proposals is October 11, 2011. The focus changed this year to a more proactive instead of reactive approach. Food Safety Foundational Program: $500K per award. The focus is on mechanisms for attachment and internalization into vegetable tissue. Out of 50 applications for this program, 5 proposals were recommended for funding. 2010 CAP program: One area of focus was on viruses and foods. The use of a farm to fork approach to solve issues with viruses, including small, medium and large operations, interventions for risk management, and detection methods for foodborne viruses, including engineering aspects. This area requested fully integrated projects: Research, Education and Extension. The second focus area was E. coli on beef at all levels of operations and fully integrated. The purpose was to identify risk factors and develop interventions to control the presence of E. coli on beef. He mentioned that now is a good time to submit stakeholder input since they are currently writing the RFAs for AFRI programs. Submission can be made by emailing NPLs, using the AFRI address, by submitting white papers, scientific organization position papers, peer-reviewed scientific articles, etc. Presentations ended and were followed by Questions from various NC1023 participants. Participants interacted with NIFA leaders on funding challenges for research and teaching. The NC-1023 multistate project will draft a white paper to define the position and highlight the importance of broadening RFAs so significant contributions by the Food Engineering community can be done. Reports Summarizing Collaborative Research Efforts Among Different Stations Sudhir Sastry (OH) Presented two projects. The first was a collaborative project on Tomato Processing between OSU, WSU, NC State and UC Davis. They have completed Research Objective 1. Objective 2 is in progress. Education Objectives have all been completed and Extension objective 1 has been completed and 2 in progress. Diane Barrett and Steve Schwartz projects are completed. One of the difficulties they found is related to the pH of the tomato products since the heat treatment varies greatly. The technologies they have investigated are: Ohmic Heating (OSU), High Pressure (OSU), MW continuous (NC State) and batch (WSU). How to Deliver Fresh Food Quality is being investigated in UC Davis. They have planned a course for IFT 2012. The evaluation of the project is being conducted by Dr Denis Grey from the Department of Psychology. The second project presented was Pathogen inactivation in fresh produce by incorporating sanitizers into existing operations within the produce chain. This project is in collaboration with Iowa State University. The processing advisory board includes: Kraft, Chiquita, Fresh Express, Sandridge, Loffredo Fresh Produce. The interest of companies varies depending on the existence of outbreaks related to their products. Dr Sastry pointed that great emphasis has been placed on microbial internalization. However, this problem should be mitigated downstream. Washing of produce is common practice. For a sanitizer to be effective, it must first reach the site where pathogens reside. The time required for a sanitizer to penetrate through a 1mm deep pore is about 1000s in water. Gaseous sanitizers increase the diffusivity, and the required times to penetrate are around 0.1 s. The hypothesis of this research is that gaseous sanitizers can be an effective way to deliver sanitizers. Gases will penetrate rapidly but will also react with the tissue.. A surfactant organic acid spray in lettuce, chlorine dioxide and chlorinated water spray are studied. In fresh produce operations, processing flow rates are high, however, transport to the vacuum cooler takes about 2 h, making this is a potential site for incorporation of sanitizers. There is still a need for quantifying the chlorine dioxide concentration and for optimization of concentration/time combinations. OSU is working on the extension part. They are planning a shortcourse in CoFE 2012 and workshops in Iowa and Ohio for the fresh produce growers and processors. They will use a Train the Trainers approach so extension personnel from various counties can assist. Wade Yang (FL) Presented the project Nonthermal processing technologies to mitigate food allergens which is a collaborative effort with FL, MN, GA, IL, and DE. This project is related to Objective 3 of the NC1023 Project. It is focused on Post-Harverst interventions. The goal of the project is to investigate the efficacy of nonthermal methods to inactivate allergens in foods: soy bean, shrimp, peanuts, almonds. Shrimp Protein Extract: Significant reduction in shrimp allergen after pulsed UV for 4 min, no change after HHP. Wheat PE: PUV, NTP, HP. reduction by all methods. Peanut PE: Reduction after PUV 3 min, HHP and NTP not tested yet. Almond: PUV 4 min, HHP and NTP not reduction under tested conditions Egg PE: Increase after PUV. Martin Lo (MD): Reported work on work done with CA. Research on freeze-thaw cycles from processing to distribution to retail to consumer. They worked with a curdlan-xhantan hydrogel that forms a puffed structure. This gel can be frozen/thawed up to five times without syneresis. They used NMR and MRI to understand the proton behavior of water as well as rheological tests for viscoelasticity and SEM images for microstructure. Gonul Kaletunc (OH): Reported on the project Enhanced stability and targeted delivery of microencapsulated anthocyanins for improved food quality and human health. This multidisciplinary project involves researchers from Food Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Food Science and Human Nutrition. Anthocyanins were encapsulated in a hydrogel which is pH sensitive. They used PDMS molds which yield cylindrical particles; the molds are filled with the encapsulated material by spin coating and PVA layers are peeled from the mold. The size of the particles is within 10-15 mm. Anthocyanin release from the microdevices in aqueous solution and attachment to the intestine using animal models were studied. Kumar Mallikarjunan (VA): Announced that Nestle is sponsoring an award with international focus: International Food Engineer Award by ASABE. Nominations are due Oct 30th, previous awardees cannot apply again. Jayem Subiah (NE): Announced that Mildford Hana will be back as temporary department head in Nebraska. Pawan Thakar (TX): Presented collaborative work on modeling diffusivity of moisture through corn during drying. Mukund Karwe (NJ): Presented the project Temperature and Pressure Non-Uniformity during HPP which is a collaboration with Mechanical Engineering Dept. The focus of this work is on Pressure Assisted Thermal Pressurization (PATP). Reducing the amount of pressurizing medium reduces the non-uniformities. The focus is on horizontal vessels, to improve uniform pressure distribution. They state that, according to work by Minerich and Labuza 2003, within a solid (meat), inactivation by high pressure is location dependent. It will depend on the pressure and shear induced during treatment. AFTERNOON SESSION: Paul Singh (CA): Presented two projects. The first one was about Modeling the gastric digestion. Five years ago he talked about his beginning work on gastric digestion. He submitted a proposal to NRI and was rejected, but rewrote, resubmitted and got funded a year later. The project will end and have no cost extension. Most of the work has been done at Davis in collaboration with New Zealand and people from various disciplines. The question of this project is what happens with the food after the fork? Nutrients are embedded in the matrix and at the same time are engineered products. One of the challenges is how to distribute the nutrients in the matrix to make sure that they will be delivered to wherever they need to be. Therefore, understanding the matrix is required. A study from a few years ago demonstrated that many nutrients just pass through the system. There are a few studies on how bolus is formed but not many studies on what happens once the bolus fall into the stomach. How is it going to disintegrate and pass from there into the small intestine? They selected the stomach to learn what are the major changes experienced there. Nutrient absorption takes place in the small intestine. After chewing, 3-4 mm particles are further reduced to 1 mm after passing through the pyloric valve. In the stomach there are food/wall and food/food interactions. In the stomach there is peristalsis, thus it can be viewed as a flexible wall reactor, with retropulsive jet as bolus particles exit the stomach. At the moment there are two in vitro systems available: the TNO intestinal model and the model from the Institute of Food Research. But, can computational modeling be used to model what happens in the stomach? By this project they modeled the flow fields for different types of fluids: Newtonian and non-newtonian for liquids. When it comes to the solids, the question to address is how do solids break down in a liquid? Thus, they built a unit to simulate the stomach and breakdown of actual food particles. The second presentation was about the game Beer Island which intends to use videogames and immersive technologies in education. The project got funded through a USDA Education challenge grant. The idea is to use develop a game that is customizable and flexible. The game is available on the internet. The game is designed so as to simulate a plant visit. Brewing was selected since it encompasses various operations. The game takes about 2 h to complete. There are multiple choice questions. It is a customizable game and will be ready in about 1 month. Cristina Sabliov (LSU): Presented a project on Delivery of antioxidant lipophilic Vitamin. The use of polymeric nanoparticles for delivery to: 1) protect 2) deliver 3) target 4) enhance bioavailability due to small size. This is a multidisciplinary project with researchers from Mechanical Engineering, Chemistry, Veterinary and Biological Engineering. The project is funded by USDA & NSF-Epscor. Showed a movie that simulates intestinal uptake of nanoparticles. Jeyam Subbiah (NE): Presented a project on the Use of PEF to enhance the extraction of bioactives from fruits and vegetables. They are also studying how the bioactivity is affected by PEF enhanced extraction of red caggabe and beetroot juices. Yields and antioxidant activity were increased and unchanged respectively. Ashim Datta (NY): Presented a multidisciplinary framework for modeling food quality and safety. He highlighted collaborative work with UC Davis (CA), UT (TN) and, currently, with Holland. Identified the model components needed for successful simulation of food safety and quality. His group has developed a framework for process modelling treating the food as a porous media and multiphase transport media combined with deformation. For example: Modeling the texture of a french fry (local attributes): measurement of the young modulus as a function of moisture content, as a function of time and with temperature as a function of time, thus predicting youngs modulus as a function of frying time. This framework would allow quality prediction based on measurements, from micro to macro mechanics. Another application could be prediction for color development during baking. Mark Morgan (IN) & Graciela W Padua (IL) : Discussed the challenges using the pilot plants, limited funds. Usually students just attend demonstrations but do not really understand how processing parameters affect product characteristics. Participants discussed ideas on how to improve lab sessions and agreed to share their lab handouts. Mark and Tameshia volunteered to gather the handouts to classify them and make them available for others to use/improve their own sessions. Sudhir Sastry and Bala Balasubramaniam (OH): Initiated a discussion on how to increase funding opportunities for food processing and engineering research. The committee agreed to draft a position paper to send to USDA. Dennis and Kumar would address the Foundational Program, Jayam and Mark with draft a document for Improving Food Quality and Sudhir would write a draft for Fruit and Vegetable Safety. Bala Balasubramaniam will coordinate overall efforts. Graciela (IL) noted that regaining the lost identity will require a greater effort and suggested to begin by contacting USDA, and follow up with other activities such as an article in the Food Technology magazine, activities at IFT Meetings, amongst others. Ashim Datta (NY): Provided an update on the Wiki committee. The website: www.foodprocessmodel.org is now available and has some contributions. He noted that the website has been hijacked and required a great effort to be manually cleaned. Participants agreed that it is a valuable tool. Kumar Mallikarjunan (VA): Presented ongoing plans for CoFE on April 2-4, 2012 in Washington DC. Registration deadline is March 26 and registration fee is $300 for professionals and $175 for students, it will include meals. Lodging $139/night. Hosted at the National Conference Center. All sessions are symposium style and will have invited speakers. Ashim will notify in two weeks if he can coordinate the tutorial workshop on multiphase computational modeling. USDA provided $50,000 towards the meeting. Two years ago there were 180 attendees in Columbus, OH. He noted that next year will be the 100 anniversary of the cherry blossom. TUESDAY OCT 4, 2011 Bala presented an agenda for the day. Cristina Sabliov (LSU): IFT Food Engineering Division Announcements FED was charged by IFT some responsibilities: Each division should be reorganized in teams. These Teams are: Content, Operating, Community, Leadership. There is a document that shows the responsibilities and members for each team. Every division needs to come up with a document in which members are assigned to tasks. The document was passed around for participants to add/edit/delete tasks in which to participate. Cristina asked the FED for support for CoFE12. However, IFT had some questions: 1. What kind of recognition will IFT receive for this event? 2. How are the speakers chosen? 3. What would happen if the funds are not provided? 4. Is there an opportunity for the content to be repurposed on the IFT community or other publications? Participants advised on answers to be given to IFT. Paul Singh (UC Davis): Asked for suggestions on what direction should the game presented yesterday go. There is an opportunity in going as a 3-4 station team for a higher education challenge grant. The advantages are the software they are using and the person who is developing the software who used to work in Pixar. Interested stations were encouraged to contact Paul. Draft of Position Paper: Bala, Kumar, Dennis, Jayem, Mark and Sudhir Drafts were presented and discussed for improvements. Bala will condense and circulate by email an updated version for the committee to provide input and send to USDA. Updates by Chairs of Ad-Hoc Committees: Objective 1: 1a. Chair: Muthu (SD) 1b. Chair: Bala (OH): OH, NJ, VA, WSU, NE. A book on nonthermal processing technologies for food was published with contribution from several participation stations. Chair: Fred Payne (KY): KY, IA, IL, WI. They want to have a web based seminar on July 2011, 7 people attended. They will develop a white paper. 1c. Chair: Ashim (NY) Objective 2: Chair Mark (IN) Objective 3: Chair Gonul (OH) Develop outreach programs. Activities: CoFE12 Produce Workshop (Gonul, Lester, Hao Feng) Eu-US Atlantis (IA, New York) ? Case studies in FE related to food safety. GAPs (IA, OH) Good agricultural practices as related to food safety. CoFE (Kumar, Martin) 2011 Germany Nonthermal Processing Workshop (Bala, Gustavo)? Annual event since 2000. 100 attendees form various places, next Australia, UC Davis. Lego League Food Safety Challenge (Bala, Kumar) ? STEM type of activity for K-12 students. It is done by volunteer coaches 6-12 children and 2 coaches. The teams develop a challenge and participate in the competition: Regional, National. In Ohio, 500 children participated. This year the focus of the competition is Food Safety. Children need to ask FS, FE experts questions about how to develop safe foods. Bala Balasubramaniam (OH): Provided some recommendations to make the AdHoc Committees more functional: " Manageable objectives and deliverables: Online Collaborations (Wiggio, Dropbox) Semi-annual adhoc commeeting via teleconference/adobe connect. " Incorporate 1 h time slots (da 1, morning and afternoon sessions for discussion Individual groups (time conflicts) The development of an NC1023 Newsletter was suggested by some participants. Election of New Secretary: Tameshia Ballard (IN) and Roger Ruan (MN) were nominated for the Secretary position. The committee agreed that Tameshia be the Secretary for this term and Roger become secretary after Tameshias term. Lester Wilson (IA): Report from the Steering Committee. Encouraged participants to keep working on collaborations and increasing the efforts of the AdHoc Committees in preparation for the mid-term report next year. He reminded us that in the past the committee was criticized for not doing all the things we were supposed to do. Lester mentioned that he will be the chair of the Steering Committee until the mid-project reporting but that someone else will have to be added. Selection of 2012 Meeting Location: Fred Payne (KY) offered to host the meeting in Lexington, KY for 2012. Volunteered for hosting the meeting in the future (2012): - Gustavo Barbosa (WSU/ID)  as communicated by Daniela Bermudez - Cristina Sabliov (LSU) - Martin Lo (MD) - Roger Ruan (MN) Meeting adjourned at 11:30am

Stations actively pursued the strengthening of formerly established collaborations and engaged in creating new ones. Progress was made in all objectives defined in the project. The utilization of innovative methods to characterize food materials was favorably impacted. The use of non-destructive techniques, such as MRI, hold tremendous potential for rapid evaluation of food quality. Understanding the fundamentals behind these new methods is a critical step in order to diversify their applications in the food industry. Ongoing research on development of improved processing technologies will potentially impact various areas. On the one hand, foods with enhanced nutritive value will be available as these technologies are scaled-up and approved for industrial processing. Knowledge of heating patterns for technologies such as ohmic heating, pressure-assisted thermal processing and microwave heating will allow for the design of processes that comply with lethality requirements and exploit the advantages of rapid heating technologies to manufacture products that are not severely thermally degraded as seen now by sterilization processes. The benefits of increasing the extractability of health promoting compounds by pretreatments such as pulsed electric fields or high pressure processing will lead to products with added nutritional value as compared to their traditionally processed counterparts. The usefulness of robust models to predict quality changes during processing operations cannot be overemphasized. On the one hand, and along with technology development, the design of processing protocols that achieve required lethalities to produce safe foods, but on the other, the rapid simulation of quality changes under specific processing conditions will save valuable time in defining processing protocols leading to high quality products. The understanding of pathogen inactivation in low moisture foods will definitely help to prevent outbreaks on products where current knowledge has failed to foresee risks that have turned into hazards, such as peanut butter. Understanding how biochemical changes are altered under irradiation environments will directly impact the planning of future space missions. The use of videogames in education is an area with enormous potential to shift the paradigm of traditional education and improve the learning of current generations that are highly driven by technology. Dissemination of knowledge obtained by multistate collaborations has successfully started by the organization of workshops and seminars (webinars) and will be a strong component of the NC-1023 multistate project in future years to directly impact on growers, processors and consumers alike.