Method for extracting nutritious antioxidants from corn waste

Of the more than 120 million metric tons of corn starch produced each year, nearly 15% is discarded or fed to chickens and other animals. Now researchers at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed a method to generate nutritional value from what is described as “a huge sidestream”.

Corn bran is rich in the potent antioxidant ferulic acid but until now it was trapped in an insoluble material matrix that humans can’t digest.

The researchers developed a way to unlock soluble ferulic acid-rich dietary fibres from this matrix, developing a hydrogel that could be digested as a prebiotic for gut health.

The method is called subcritical water extraction to isolate the soluble fibre part of the bran that contains ferulic acid.

Francisco Vilaplana, Associate Professor in the Division of Glycoscience at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, said crosslinking the soluble fibre using natural enzymes (laccase and peroxidase) is the next step to creating a hydrogel, which could also be used as a potential wound treatment.

“We showed that we can upgrade a food side stream into a valuable material for both food and biomedical applications that could mitigate inflammatory processes,” Vilaplana said.

The method was published in the scientific journal, Green Chemistry.

Image credit: David Callahan