Extraction and characterization of avenin from oats for material and food applications

Abstract

Petroleum derivatives are destined to become obsolete sooner or later, because of their increasing prices and because petroleum employment is unanimously recognized as non-environmentally friendly. Alternatives should be found and in these recent years biopolymer materials are taking off. Some of them are already in use but some others are yet to be discovered. Cereals are supposed to be a very good source for new materials because of their great availability and because most of their by-products could represent a valid raw material for producing biopolymer packaging materials. Of course most of the cereals are very suitable for food applications as well. Avenin has not almost been investigated as a source for possible material applications so far. It’s showing good barrier properties just like the other prolamins. It’s very similar to gluten but compared to it avenin is not inducing celiac diseases. This is an important advantage when considering aspects concerning both material and food applications. This MSc thesis is mainly focused on finding a reliable extraction process and in characterizing the protein once studied its behavior during the process. Furthermore some preliminary studies on material applications have been conducted in order to evaluate the quality of the extracted protein. This work represents a starting point for further studies to refine the extraction process and to investigate films properties, both mechanical and barrier ones.