Carbohydrate agricultural applications

The noninvasive nature of NMR spectroscopy combined with the chemical specificity of the NMR method provides direct access to the distribution of various chemical constituents for the histochemistry of plant materials in situ NMR spectroscopy can be used to identify the major constituents, and chemical-.shift imaging can be used to spatially localize them. The latter can be applied to localize aromatics, carbohydrates, as well as water and fat or oil in plant samples. The suitability of many fresh fruits and living plants to be studied by NMR imaging results in a variety of applications in agriculture and food science [Mcc I, Mcc2]. 

After two years in Washington, DC, Dr. Whistler was hired to head the Starch Stracture Section at the newly established Northern Regional Laboratory (NRL) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Peoria, IlUnois, a position he held fi om 1940 through 1945. There and ever since, he followed a theme of basic research related to practical applications, driven by a strong belief that carbohydrates could be important commercial commodities. 

Therefore, during the past 30 years, numerous vibrational spectroscopic methods (near infrared, NIR infrared, IR and Raman spectroscopy) have been introduced as very efficient alternatives, which are widely used today to determine fats, proteins, and carbohydrates and also numerous secondary plant substances occurring in agricultural products. For authentication purposes, the mentioned spectroscopic techniques can provide the valuable data in a few minutes, allowing the discrimination of different agrofood samples. Also new developments of IR and Raman microscopes have considerably extended the field of application. These sophisticated techniques allow to perform point-by-point measurements (mapping) or to acquire simultaneously spectra (imaging) from a small sample area. 

Carbohydrates such as starch and cellulose find application in agriculture practices either as raw materials, in the form of fillers and components in composite films and sheets, or after suitable chemical modification. Starch is the major form of carbohydrate storage in green plants. It is the main component of most seeds, tubers, and roots and it is produced commercially... 

---