Development of a Universal Method of Measuring Macromolecules in Oats.

Abstract

The breeding of agricultural food crops has been of imperative importance for thousands of years and remains so today, with new methods being developed regularly. Some of these newer methods have some legal difficulties, forcing scientists to stay with the older, reliable yet slower methods. With one of these methods; mutation breeding, oat is being developed with new properties such as high content of proteins or healthy beta-glucan fibres for the market of the future. A challenge in this method is to quickly screen vast numbers of different oat lines to find these desired traits. In order to speed up this process I have strived to develop a method to store a preparation of oat flour for longer periods of time in a state that is compatible with the starch, beta-glucan and protein assays without degradation. Also, an alternate method for weighing oat flour on a scale has been attempted to be developed, since this too is a bottle-neck. The results show that by storing the oat flour in a fridge (+5°C), all three macromolecules remain stable for at least 5 years. Further, a heat sterilized or biostatic-containing slurry of oat flour in water shows promising potential of preventing degradation of all three macromolecules by being stored in a frozen state. In order to avoid the time consuming scale, a spectrophotometer’s absorbance at 610 nm has been shown to correlate with the oat flour concentration with a sufficient accuracy for screening purposes.

Popular Abstract

Finding Better Oats Faster

We face many challenges today concerning food and its production. More people need to be fed using less land and fewer resources. Therefore we need to develop new crops that meet these challenges while remaining nutritious. It demands a lot of work, yet I have found solutions for some of the current bottle-necks of the process. By avoiding to grind and weigh the oats prior to every experiment a lot of time is saved and better varieties can be found faster than ever before.

We need to feed more people than ever before, and the amount of farmland is constantly diminishing. We need to lessen the environmental impact while retaining high nutrition. That is why we need better crops. Crops that provide a well-balanced nutritional profile, with high yields and low energy consumption. To find these crops I have developed a method for quickly screening large populations of oat varieties in search for even more nutritious oats.

Oats have been shown to be very healthy due to the balanced nutritional profile, that is, the proportion of fat, protein and starch in the seed matches our needs. Also, they contain large amounts of so-called beta-glucan fibres which protect our hearts from disease. If this wasn't enough they are also possible to grow organically or with a small amount of pesticide. Now that you also love oats and see their amazing possibilities you can understand why we want to improve this already great food.

So how do we improve oats? There are many methods for breeding plants, some of which have been around for thousands of years and some only a few years often referred to as GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). However, all forms of breeding modify the genes of said organisms. Some in ways that occur ‘‘naturally’’ and others not, the more ‘‘naturally’’ occurring ways are less legally restrained. Therefore, most, including our research group, have chosen a more ‘‘natural’’ approach. The problem with our method, called mutation breeding, is that you have to examine thousands of new varieties to see which ones have improved in the way that you wished.

That is where my work fits into the picture. In order to speed up this process of finding new oat varieties, I have developed a novel method for quickly measuring the protein, starch and beta-glucan content. The time-consuming bottle-necks of the ordinary procedure have been grinding the oats to flour, so they can be tested, and also weighing this flour accurately. I have found faster solutions for both of these issues. Firstly, by testing the storeability of oat flour I have determined that time can be saved by grinding a lot of oats at once and storing it suspended in water in a frozen state. Further, in order to replace the scale, this suspension’s concentration and therefore the mass of flour can be accurately determined by measuring the light that passes through by use of a spectrophotometer. With these new methods, the hunt for better oats will be faster than ever before!

An interesting side-find of this study is that the protein content in some cases increased if the suspensions were allowed to ferment. Perhaps this is not so odd considering that sourdough bread, the fermentation of wheat, is an ancient way of increasing nutrition. Therefore maybe we have stumbled upon an alternate way of increasing the nutrition of oats.

• author: Ågren, Pontus
• supervisor: Olof Olsson
• organization: Pure and Applied Biochemistry; Computational Chemistry
• course: KBKM05 20182
• year: 2019
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Agriculture and Food Sciences
• keywords: Oat, mutation breeding, storage, applied biochemistry
• language: English
• id: 8967720
• date added to LUP: 2022-08-01 12:18:43
• date last changed: 2022-08-01 12:18:43