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Title: MULTIPLE-PARTICLE TRACKING STUDY OF THE MICROHETEROGENEITY OF NUTRIM-10 SUSPENSIONS

Author
item Xu, Jingyuan - James
item CHANG, TUNGSUN
item Inglett, George
item Carriere, Craig
item TSENG, YIIDER

Submitted to: Cereal Chemistry
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/24/2005
Publication Date: 1/10/2006
Citation: Xu, J., Chang, T., Inglett, G.E., Carriere, C.J., Tseng, Y. 2006. Multiple-particle tracking study of the microheterogeneity of nutrim-10 suspensions. Cereal Chemistry. 83(1):37-41.

Interpretive Summary: Nutrim is a newly developed food product containing great amounts of the soluble fiber beta-glucan. Nutrim is a hydrocolloidal extract which can function as a cream and fat replacer, nutrifibers and texturizers. However, the properties and the structure-function relationship of Nutrim are still not clearly understood. This paper examines some of the basic flow properties of one of the Nutrim products, Nutrim-10, which contains 10% beta-glucan. Using the new technology of multiple-particle tracking (MPT), we studied the flow behavior of Nutrim-10. It was shown that the MPT technique is powerful for studying the properties of food systems.

Technical Abstract: Nutrim is a newly developed food product containing the dietary soluble fiber, beta-glucan. The microstructural heterogeneities of Nutrim-10 suspensions were investigated by monitoring the thermally driven displacements of well-dispersed microspheres via video fluorescence microscopy. By comparing the distribution of the time-dependent mean-square displacement (MSD) of polystyrene microspheres embedded in three concentrations of Nutrim-10 suspensions, we found that the degree of heterogeneity of the suspensions increased dramatically within a narrow range of Nutrim-10 concentrations. The ensemble-averaged MSD of 5.5% Nutrim-10 suspension exhibited a power-law behavior which scaled linearly with time. This behavior was similar to that of homogeneous aqueous glycerol solution. But the MSD distribution for Nutrim-10 was wider and more asymmetric than for glycerol. Increasing Nutrim-10 concentration rendered the MSD distribution much more asymmetric and skewed. Multiple-Particle Tracking (MPT) provided a new and quantitative method to characterize the organization of plant biopolymers in suspension or solution.