Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Cheese whey or lactoserum, by-product of cheese manufacturing, has posed serious disposal problems for many cheese makers. Whey disposal through sewage systems can overload the treatment facilities by its high biochemical oxygen demand (BOD: 30,000 and 60,000 mg/L). A plant discharging 1000 gal of whey to a sewage system creates a load equivalent of more than 1000 domestic users. Thus, there is a need to look for alternate avenues to transform these wastes into value-added products which can manage the wastes as well as simultaneously produce a high value end-product. In this pursuit, the proposed project investigates the use of lactoserum/cheese whey as raw material for production of mixed culture microorganisms and for the development highly enriched protein product. The specific objectives includes: isolation/identification of microbial strains involved in the process and optimization of various process steps (protein precipitation, fermentation, protein recovery) to increase the yield of the protein and to eliminate all live microorganisms from the final dried product. This is an advantageous and green approach. The project shall be carried in collaboration with Corporation HET, a company which is actively involved in the research and the successful completion of the project will result in understanding complete know-how of the technology of biotransformation of cheese whey leading to efficacious and economic protein product ready for use as animal feed. The project will provide an opportunity to train HQP (3 Ph.D. students, one post doc and a research associate).