Project to establish a Food Microstructure Group
This project will allow José Bonilla to establish a group to study food structures at their microscopic level. The research will focus on how plant proteins organize different microscopic structures, and how these microstructures dictate rheological and textural attributes of food materials.
The image above shows microscopic gluten network from inside a bread dough taken by Jens Saalbrink (Research Assistant in this project). With these project we will be studying different food under the microscope. This NNF start package project will integrate and expand the current NNF microtexture project grant (PI: José Bonilla) in which a PhD student is hired to study the aggregation processes of plant proteins at the microscopic scale. With both projects NNF has provided 7.5 M DKK to the study of food microstructure around plant based foods. These grants and the establishment of a food microstructure research group that aims at understanding how the structures we destroy with our mouth on a daily basis are organized at the microscopic scale. ‘With the outcomes we will achieve from this project we will gain insights into how food texture can be rationally designed, which will move forward the development of the future foods.
Funding
Period: July 2025 - June 2029
Amount: DKK 4,5 million.
Source: Novo Nordisk Foundation
The research will take advantage of advanced optical microscopy techniques to obtain information from the microscopic scale of foods that will be linked to the macrostructure and texture of the food materials. This project will employ one PhD student and one research assistant. The PhD Student project will focus on how different processes influence the structure formation of plant-based proteins at the nano- and micro-scale, and how those changes relate to texture. The research assistant will assist on the establishment of the above-mentioned advanced optical techniques for food materials and the correlation their microstructural findings with rheology. The studies will be focused around plant-based foods materials. The structures of animal-based food will be used as a contrast (to plant-based) and will also be studied to help develop a deeper understanding of the connection between food microstructure and texture.
The project activities will be focused around three areas:
1. Establishment of advanced optical techniques for studying food microstructure. Techniques include: advanced super-resolution microscopy, label-free chemical imaging, fluorescent lifetime imaging.
2. Development of image analysis workflows to quantify food microstructure.
3. Correlating microscopic structural data with structural data at other length-scales. Example: nanometer scale (with data from scaterring techniques) or millimeter scales (with rheology or texture analysis).
MicroTexture: Unlocking the Secrets of Plant-Based Textures through Investigations at Multiple Length Scales". Founded by Novo Nordisk Foundation. This new start package helps support and expand the activities originally planned in the MicroTexture project.
José Bonilla
PI, Tenure-Track Assistant Professor
Ina Rud Folmer,
PhD Student
Jens Saalbrink,
Research Assistant