Prestigious Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) of Mysore has developed two new technologies, an improver mix for bread, bun and rolls, and an automatic continuous cooker.

It has also obtained two US patents for detection of harmful bacteria and fungi in foods.

The improver mix for yeast leavened bakery products like breads, buns and rolls can improve quality of these products considerably.

Indian wheat is generally medium hard to soft in nature with 8-11 per cent gluten content. The flour from such wheat yield inferior quality products in terms of volume, crumb softness and crumb grain. To overcome this, newer additives, which can improve the
quality of these yeast leavened bakery products are required.

The CFTRI process involves fine grinding of ingredients followed by blending in a mixer and packing. The major equipments required are mixers and grinders. The process is ready for commercial exploitation.

The automatic continuous cooking unit provides controlled heating to ensure optimal cooking. It also has continuous conveyor system to control material feed rate. The device is covered under an Indian patent.

The batch type or semi-continuous cooking units with steam-jacketed kettle is the major equipment in use now. But, it has the disadvantage of inconsistent texture quality.

The two new processes, detection of Bacillus cereus and oligonucleotide primers for fungi in food have secured US patents.

Among the predominantly occurring food-borne pathogenic bacteria, Bacillus cereus has been found to occur abundantly in Indian foods. It is also the root cause for diarrhea. B. cereus is detected by its ability to grow on selective plating medium containing
egg yolk and inability to utilize mannitol.

The polymerase chain reaction (PCR), developed by the CFTRI, detects B. cereus group of bacteria in food samples using specific sets of primers.

In a mixed microflora, the designed phosphotidyl inositol primer set specifically detects B. cereus with no cross reactivity. This method is simple and effective protocol for extraction of template DNA for B. cereus present in a varied food matrix. PCR
conditions for the detection of B. cereus present in milk and cooked rice have been standardized. The rapid and sensitive PCR method can detect even one cell of B. cereus in food system, says the latest CFTRI newsletter.

The second process, oligonucleotide primers detect aflatoxigenic fungi in foods and feeds even at 24 hours of growth.

Aflatoxins are potent carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic metabolites produced primary by the fungal species of Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. Food and feeds, especially in warm climates, are susceptible to invasion of aflatoxigenic Aspergillus spp. and subsequent production of aflatoxins during pre-harvesting, processing, transportation or storage.Oligonucleotide primers is a method for detection of the fungal pathogens in pure culture system and offers several advantages over the traditional methods of detection. It is a simple and effective method which can be used for the isolation of template DNA without the application of liquid nitrogen, the newsletter adds.