Important results from the project
The project met most of the project´s objective. We have developed a method that combines synchrotron tomography and wide angle X-ray scattering (WAXS) to study wheat bran structures at different scales. Experiments at two beam times and biochemical fractionation analysis revealed significant structural and compositional changes caused by wheat bran processing at the histological, network and molecular levels.
Expected long term effects
The project identified the histological layers and crystalline domains as important obstacles to efficient fractionation and highlighted them as objective to improve processing yield. The developed tomography and X-ray scattering methods can also be extrapolated to other plant tissues, providing a universal tool for biomass characterization.
Approach and implementation
The beamlines were performed within the proposed timelines: ForMAX at MAX IV-laboratoriet (December 2023) and DIAD beamline at Diamond Light Source (February 2024). Data analysis became challenging due to the enormous amount of data recorded. We have implemented a pipeline for segmentation of tomography data, which will be extended for the wheat bran fractions. Discussions are ongoing with Lantmännen to explore the industrial application of the synchrotron results for process optimization.
The project description has been provided by the project members themselves and the text has not been looked at by our editors.
