Location: Grain Quality and Structure Research
Project Number: 3020-30600-002-000-D
Project Type: In-House Appropriated
Start Date: Apr 13, 2025
End Date: Apr 12, 2030
Objective:
OBJECTIVE 1: Determine how grain structure, chemistry, and cooking impact sorghum functional and nutritional quality.
Subobjective 1.A. Determine relationships between sorghum grain structure, protein cross-linking and starch gelatinization.
Subobjective 1.B. Effect of cooking/heat processing on sorghum phenolics and their bioactivity.
Subobjective 1.C. Development of fermented sorghum beverage.
OBJECTIVE 2: Improve and develop methods for measuring grain composition and end-use quality traits in sorghum.
Subobjective 2.A. Development of single kernel NIR calibrations for sorghum grain composition.
Approach:
Sorghum is an important drought and heat tolerant crop in the central U.S. Sorghum has been primarily used for animal feed in the U.S. and is consistently used in the biofuel industry and increasingly in foods. As for any cereal, grain composition plays an important role in its utilization. To support increased utilization of sorghum grain, especially in high value markets such as foods, research is needed that identifies how grain components are impacted by processing. While it is known that processing will impact sorghum grain and flour, understanding how grain structure relates to processing and subsequent end-use quality is needed. For example, internal grain structure is linked to protein content and cross-linking which in turn may impact starch gelatinization and fermentation. The exact relationship among these factors is not known, however. Discovering how physical grain structure relates to protein cross-linking and starch thermal properties will provide information to help assist breeding sorghum for improved end-use quality (Obj. 1.A).
Another issue related to processing of sorghum grain is how processing, especially cooking, impacts sorghum bioactive properties. Sorghum is known to contain polyphenols with important human health attributes. While research has now been done relating sorghum polyphenols to health attributes, considerably less research has investigated how cooking sorghum impacts sorghum polyphenols and their health attributes. As sorghum will almost always be consumed by humans in a cooked/processed form, it is necessary to understand how cooking will impact bioactive properties of sorghum Obj. 1.B).
Additionally, development of novel sorghum based food products also supports increased utilization of sorghum. Most research on new sorghum based foods has focused on baked products, especially for the gluten-free market, but research on other forms of sorghum-based foods, such as fermented beverages, could expand sorghum usage (Obj. 1.C).
Utilization of sorghum is influenced by overall grain composition and there is a need to be able to rapidly screen sorghum samples for grain composition. Thus, this project also includes supporting research focused on developing near-infrared spectroscopy methods (Obj. 2). For all objectives and subobjectives, multiple sources of sorghum germplasm will be used in testing to ensure that genetic variability is captured in the experiments.