Fight Food Waste CRC PhD Scholarship - Functional food ingredients from waste streams of plant protein production

 In this project you will gain skills relevant to important areas of processing of biological materials into high value ingredients for use in high-value food, packaging and other applications. It will help you establish a track record relevant to the circular economy, sustainability and waste minimisation. It also provides a great opportunity to work with the Australian plant processing industry.  Around the world, the consumption of products based on plant protein is increasing. However, the extraction and purification of plant proteins create large quantities of waste.

This project will investigate the concept of conversion of the plant protein wastes into highly functional food ingredients using green and clean technologies. The aim is to produce different types of fibres with improved nutritional characteristics and techno-functional properties for food and non-food applications. Food biopolymers will be altered at both micro- as well as nano-scales, and innovative functions will be created using approved approaches and their properties tested and optimised using advanced analytical techniques. Process tolerance and performance of the novel ingredients will be also examined for relevant food applications.