Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

It is becoming increasingly clear that food structure has a major impact not only on the stability and quality of food, but even more importantly to its function during consumption and digestion. The food products of the future will be designed not only to be highly nutritious and convenient, but they also will have to impart additional functions to the consumer. However, to obtain the optimal matrix structure able of delivering functionality to our body during consumption and digestion, it is of fundamental importance to understand the building blocks of structure and how they assemble and disassemble during processing and in our body. The Department of Food Science at the University of Guelph is worldwide recognized for its leadership in the area of material science, and the purchase of an Atomic force microscope will allow the applicants to maintain this leadership position. Although similar equipment is available on campus, is 100% utilized for either teaching or method development, and it is not accessible to the applicants' research teams to carry out fundamental food material science research. For significant advances to be made in this field, sample preparation needs to be developed, methods experimental approaches have to be mastered, and little can be achieved with a few hours of access to the instrument. We are requesting an AFM as these imaging techniques are becoming routine in the study of food and soft materials, and occasional access to such instrumentation is not sufficient to make significant advances in the field. This instrument will be housed in the Department of food science, and will be available to all the applicants, who have active research programs looking at various aspects of structure of food components. This new state of the art imaging tool will be accessed by a large number of HQP.