学術セッションAcademic Session

"Protein crisis," the anticipated shortage of food protein, has been identified as a key issue in the food supply. Cultured meats, meat substitutes, and insect diets have been identified as possible solutions. The global population continues to grow and is expected to peak at around 10.4 billion in the future. Further attempts are needed to secure food protein for the future. In other countries, "protein transitions" have been advocated through the development of innovative "alternative" protein foods and raw materials that will bring about dietary changes. This presentation will outline the structure and properties of plant proteins such as soybeans, which are being used as a source of "meat alternatives" as the basis for such efforts, and compare them to those of meat from livestock and insect proteins. In addition, technologies such as genetic modification and genome editing will be needed to expand the use of plant proteins in the future. Attempts to modify the functional and other properties of plant proteins using these technologies, as well as attempts to reduce allergic properties, which is an issue with these technologies, will also be discussed.

More than 40% of fruits and vegetables produced in the world are discarded without ever reaching the table. As the world's population continues to grow, it is crucial to eliminate this food loss to ensure a stable food supply in the future. One effective way to achieve this is to develop a Smart Distribution system, which optimizes the entire process from production to consumption by coordinating information. Smart Distribution eliminates wastefulness and unreasonableness and creates new value for food. Especially in the Smart Distribution of vegetables and fruits, "freshness" is essential information, but it is an ambiguous indicator that has not been scientifically defined. In this talk, the research currently engaged in understanding, measuring, and manipulating the freshness of fruits and vegetables will be introduced, and we look forward to the future of fruit and vegetable distribution that links farm to table.

Waste invasive weeds with no economic importance and negligible food/fodder value. An example is of Parthenium hysterophorus which is among the world’s seven most devastating weeds. P. hysterophorus has a cellulose content of 45.2 ± 1.81%, w/w). This waste could be a potential feedstock as source of bioenergy, namely bioethanol. In this study, P. hysterophorus was processed for pretreatment, hydrolysis, etc intensified by sonication for an enhanced yield of ethanol. Autoclaving-assisted dilute acid treatment followed by ultrasound-assisted alkaline delignification were the optimum pretreatment/delignification strategies for P. hysterophorus biomass. Carboxymethylcellulase (1.0 U/mg, 1.7 mg/mL) produced by an isolate Bacillus amyloliquefaciens SS35 and β-glucosidase (Novozyme 188), were used for enzymatic hydrolysis of pretreated/delignified biomass. The hydrolysate was further fermented to ethanol by employing a yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae MTCC170. The bioethanol production process was carried out in both separate hydrolysis and fermentation (SHF) and simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) modes. Sonication at 35 kHz and 10% duty cycle was used for hydrolysis and fermentation processes. Kinetic analysis of delignification has revealed 2-fold enhancement with ultrasound as compared to mechanically agitated treatment. The kinetics of ultrasound-assisted enzymatic hydrolysis showed a 6-fold enhancement in the hydrolysis rate. In SHF, the control experiment resulted to an ethanol titer of 10.93 g/L (0.15 g/g raw biomass) after 18 h of fermentation. The time of fermentation was reduced to 10 h in ultrasound-assisted process and resulted to an ethanol concentration of 12.14 g/L (0.17 g/g raw biomass) (Singh et al. 2015b). In case of ultrasoundassisted SSF experiments, the results of control experiment revealed that the maximum ethanol production was achieved at 54th h of fermentation with an ethanol titer of 10.57 g/L (0.14 g/g raw biomass). However, test experiment resulted in ethanol titer of 15.62 g/L (0.21 g/g raw biomass) after 18.3 h. The total yield of ethanol from the fermentation of the pentose and hexose hydrolysates was approx. 200 g per kg of raw biomass, which is at par with the yields from molasses fermentation.

In order to protect the coastal areas from tsunamis, new techniques have been developed for making the breakwater resilient against tsunami, which can barricade the tsunami in the sea. Gabions, sheet piles, geogrids, geobags are used as countermeasure element to develop a resilient breakwater. Prformance of the developed reinforcing techniques was evaluated by conducting a series physical model tests and numerical simulations. As a part of physical model tests, shaking table tests, centrifuge model tests and tsunami overflow tests were performed on the scaled models of Japanese and Indian breakwaters. The earthquake loadings were provided in the form of foreshocks and main shock. After the earthquake, tsunami overflow tests were performed. During the tests, accelerometers, pore water pressure transducers and laser displacement gauges were used to measure acceleration, pore water pressure, settlement and horizontal displacement of the model respectively. The effectiveness of the reinforced breakwater is determined by comparing its performances with those of the conventional breakwaters. The comparison is done in terms of reduction in (i) settlement and horizontal displacement of the breakwater, (ii) excess pore water pressures in the foundation and (iii) acceleration. Numerical analyses were also done by FLAC and PLAXIS in order to understand the mechanism. It was observed during the tests that the reinforced breakwater performed very well in reducing the damage of the breakwater caused by the earthquake and tsunami. And finally, the developed breakwater models showed high resiliency against the earthquake and tsunami. Overall, the study can be useful to develop countermeasures for a breakwater on the real ground in order to reduce damage brought by tsunami in the future. Details of the study are explained by Chaudhary et. al (2019, 2018a-c, 2017).