FOOD FINGERPRINTING BREAKTHROUGH FOR FONTERRA Fonterra researchers have followed their award-winning milk fingerprinting with a breakthrough chemical imprint for the dairy industry. Their latest ‘cutting-edge’ development uses Raman spectroscopic imaging to reveal what they call the ‘product fingerprint’ in food structures, which has the potential to speed up product development and help in the hunt for healthy new foods. It is believed to be the first time this technology has been used by the dairy industry internationally. Fonterra Programme Manager, Food Structure Design, Christina Coker says the researchers’ work is a major step forward for new technology development. The innovation will help researchers know more about the make-up of the food structures they are studying and the chemical interactions of any additions and changes. And in near-real time, much like Fonterra’s milk fingerprinting breakthrough, which won a national innovation award last year. “A day doing this is worth months of trial and error,” says Coker of chemical fingerprinting. The result is the culmination of six years’ hard work for Fonterra Senior Technical Officer Elizabeth Nickless, whose research was supported by Fonterra colleague Dr Steve Holroyd and Professor Keith Gordon’s team at Otago University, and the University of Auckland, which currently has the only Raman instrument in the country. 42 APRIL 2016 2016 Events Food & Hotel Asia 2016 Singapore – April 12 to 15 – Asia’s largest and most influential trade event www.foodnhotelasia.com Pro Wine Asia 2016 Singapore – April 12 to 15 – world’s leading wines and spirits fair www.prowineasia.com The Food Show Wellington 2016 Wellington - May 20 to 22 – New Zealand’s national food and wine event www.foodshow.co.nz Fine Food NZ Auckland - June 26 to 28 – New Zealand’s no.1 food service, hospitality and retail event www.finefoodnz.co.nz 49th Annual AIFST Convention Brisbane - June 27 and 28 – most important event of Australian food industry professionals www.aifst.asn.au NZIFST Annual Conference 2016 Rotorua – July 4 to 7 – Theme: Setting direction www.nzifst.org.nz/conference The Food Show Auckland 2016 Auckland – July 28 to 31 www.foodshow.co.nz IFT16 2016 Chicago – July 16 to 19 – industry’s largest collection of food ingredients, equipment, processing and packaging under one roof www.am-fe.ift.org/cms Fi Asia Jakarta – September 21 to 23 – innovative ingredients Figlobal.com/asia-indonesia Foodtech Packtech 2016 Auckland – October 11 to 13 – New Zealand’s most important trade tech event for New Zealand food, technology and packaging Foodtechpacktech.co.nz SIAL 2016 Paris – October 16 to 20 – largest food innovation observatory in the world www.sialparis.com Lipids, Neutraceuticals and Healthy Diets through the Life Cycle Nelson – November 8 to 10 www.oilsfats.org.nz Got an event you want your industry to know about? Contact the editor: kcalvert@hayleymedia.com with all details. It was also made possible by advances over the past couple of years in high-resolution imaging. The spectroscopic technique builds on traditional confocal laser microscopy and analyses the distribution of chemical bonds to give a clearer, unprecedented picture of structures and interactions in samples. The confocal process uses lasers to create high resolution images with depth. The Raman spectroscopy analyses vibrational, rotational and other low-frequency modes to clarify the picture even more. “You are getting a fingerprint of all the different chemical bonds in each pixel in each image and then the software will recognise which pixels have the same chemical imprint,” says Nickless. “Raman spectroscopy lets us see the distribution of components that we couldn’t see before. And we can then differentiate what those are, where they are and what’s changing … for product development.” The combination of those technologies represents a giant step towards better understanding the composition of food and helping to create new foods such as creams, cheese and yoghurts, says Coker. The research was supported by the Transforming the Dairy Value Chain Primary Growth Partnership. This is a programme of innovation co-funded by MPI and industry partners, including Fonterra and DairyNZ. A Raman confocal image like this gives researchers a chemical fingerprint of the composition of structures they are studying
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