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AOCS Protein and Co-Products Division
Newsletter October 2007

Message from the Chair, by Keshun Liu

Hope you all have had a great summer so far.

Four months have elapsed since we attended the AOCS Annual meeting in middle May in Québec, Canada. Fond memories of the meeting are still in our minds. Thanks to your effort and involvement, our division successfully held 6 technical sessions, one of which was jointly organized with colleagues of the Japan Oil Chemists' Society, and another one was with Agricultural Microscopy Division. We also had a joint dinner event with the Edible Applications Technology Division.

The Edible Applications Technology/Protein and Co-Products dinner.

The invited dinner speaker was Dr. Jim Daun of Agri-Analytical Consulting, who gave an interesting talk about historical development of science and technology for the canola industry.

Jim Daun speaks on "Fuzzy Canola."

Our division board has undergone some changes this year. In March, Nick Parris, PCP Division treasurer and secretary, retired. Phil Kerr of Solae Co., previously a member-at-large, industrial rep. for PCP Division, elected to take this position. Congratulations, Phil.

While most of us are relaxing during this summer season, about a dozen members are quietly busy organizing the PCP Division's technical sessions for the AOCS 2008 Annual Meeting, to be held May 18-21 in Seattle. As a result, based on updated information from Mike Dowd, PCP Division vice chair, who is in charge of our Division's technical program, the PCP program for the 2008 meeting has already shaped up. We will have 5 symposia. Topics include

• Co-products Utilization from BioEnergy Processing,
• Rendering Protein By-Products,
• Plant Products for Aquafeeds,
• Health Benefits of Proteins, and
• Physical Functionality of Proteins.

Also for next year's meeting, we plan to run a PCP Division t-shirt drive. Returning to our divison's tradition, we will hold our dinner event just within our division. The venue and time are tentatively set on Tuesday (May 20) at the Washington Athletic Club, a few blocks from the meeting place in Seattle.

Washington Athletic Club Web site: http://www.wac.net.

Although not in any pairing with the U.S presidential election, 2008 is also a year for a PCP election. All positions but chairperson are open for nomination. So, I would encourage each one of you to get involved more with PCP and AOCS, and volunteer or nominate one of your colleagues for PCP office. Feel free to contact me or Mike Dowd if you want to volunteer or nominate someone for PCP officer, or have any ideas or suggestions. Your services and involvements will be remembered and rewarded.

Have a terrific fall season.

Keshun Liu
Chair
AOCS Protein and Co-Products Division Chairman

ADM awards

The Archer Daniels Midland Award is presented annually to the authors of the best paper relating to protein and co-products published during the past year in AOCS Press publications. The award is sponsored by Archer Daniels Midland and administered by the Protein and Co-Products Division of the AOCS.

The Archer Daniels Midland Award, Chemistry and Nutrition category, is presented at the AOCS Annual Meeting.

The 2007 recipients in the Chemistry and Nutrition category are William Porter, Karen R. Conca, Walter G. Yeomans, Shawn Diotte, Amy Lynch, and Jennifer Tate, for "Modification of Maillard browning in a microwaved glucose/glycine model system by water-soluble natural antioxidants and foods containing them" (JAOCS 83:697).

The Archer Daniels Midland Award, Engineering and Technology category, is presented.

This year's recipient in the Engineering and Technology category are Rebecca Marnoch and Levent L. Diosady, for "Production of mustard protein isolates from Oriental mustard seed" (JAOCS 83:65). The awards were presented at the Protein and Co-Products Division/Edible Application Division joint dinner on May 15, 2007. Congratulations to the winners!

You may read the winning papers in their entirety online by following the links above.

Pending Elections

PCP elections will be held in the spring of 2008. It is time to start thinking about developing a slate of candidates. All positions, except the Chairperson, are open for nomination. If you are interested in running for any of these positions or nominating someone you know, please contact Keshun Liu or Mike Dowd.

Need Your Suggestions on Book Projects

The Books and Special Publications Committee needs your help in developing new book projects for AOCS Press. The world has changed, and the old ways of developing book projects no longer provide a sufficient number of projects to keep AOCS Press productive and competitive in the scientific publishing field. Please send topics that you believe to be of interest to the members of your division and the scientific community generally, and that you think would make a viable publication to Jodey Schonfeld (email address jodeys@aocs.org). It would be helpful if you also suggest possible editors and/or authors.

Message from the PCP Division Secretary-Treasurer, by Phil Kerr

As my Protein and Co-Products Division Board responsibilities shift from Industry At-Large member to Secretary-Treasurer I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself as well as create the environment whereby our division membership can help influence the direction and content of our newsletter. Our common goal should be to use this powerful tool to help advance the oilseed processing industry and the global customers of its products, service and information. In addition, we'll want to use it to celebrate the successes of the division and its members and use it to help further the professional development of our members. One of my roles for the PCP Division board is to serve as division newsletter editor and I look forward to helping the division in this role and others to enhance our growth and impact on the industry.

Collectively we face significant challenges as an industry: meeting a global population's needs for safe, nutritious products while continually meeting the ongoing challenges to enhance the sustainability of manufacturing these products with increasingly scarce resources. For perspective, I have been a member of the AOCS and PCP Division for almost two decades. In the time that I have been a member of our division, the world's population has increased by almost two billion. Using World Health Organization estimates of the yearly, minimum nutritional requirements for humans, the amount of protein needed to sustain this increase in world population is comparable to the amount of protein produced by the entire soybean industry of the United States annually. PCP Division members that are just now starting their careers will face a world with a population of 9 or 10 billion people. So as we face the ongoing challenge of meeting the nutritional needs an increasing world population, where is the additional protein going to come from? What technologies need to be discovered and commercialized to do this in the most efficient and environmentally sustainable way? Surely technical innovation in oilseeds and their proteinaceous co-products will play an increasingly important role in meeting the future needs of our population.

Projected world population over time.

Our division must play a key role in helping shape the technical innovations that will be needed to meet these challenges at the scale needed for a growing, global base of consumers. Discoveries will need to come from all regions of the world and all segments of the oilseed processing industry. Collaborations between PCP Division scientists from academia, industry and government organizations will be required to be effective in addressing the needs for knowledge, services, processes and products. Our newsletter will help identify the contributions our members are making to help drive this technological innovation and identify opportunities for collaborations among our members.

I welcome your thoughts how the newsletter can continue to meet your needs for timely, important information. While much of it will focus on our annual meeting and its technical program, I welcome your suggestions for topics of interest, and certainly welcome volunteers that want to contribute to the newsletter! I can be reached at pkerr@solae.com.

Best regards,

Phil Kerr
Secretary-Treasurer
AOCS Protein and Co-Products Division

AOCS, 2710 S. Boulder, Urbana, IL 61802-6996 USA