The prevalence of obesity has risen rapidly and robustly in the past fifty years due to the easy availability of energy dense foods in a sedentary environment. Targeting the body's appetite-regulating systems to control calorie intake is a novel and consumer friendly approach to weight management. A promising approach is to deliver specific nutrients to the specific site in the gastrointestinal tract where they trigger nutrient sensing circuits which in turn signal to the brain to reduce food intake. We have shown that this gut-brain axis can be manipulated to reduce subsequent food intake. This project aims to demonstrate "molecule to product" capability and examine the potential market for health claims from this and prior work. The evidence generated in the current BBSRC study will support a health claim, and the potential to market satiating products with scientifically proven effects represents a significant commercial opportunity which we wish to develop with Follow-on-Funding.

A report "Waste or resource?-stimulating the bioeconomy", published in March 2014 by the House of Lords Science and Technology select committee, highlighted the level of waste generated in the UK and the potential to exploit this for the generation of high value products. BBSRC funded research at The University of Nottingham over the past five years has been looking at the technical barriers behind the conversion of agricultural residues (such as wheat straw) into fuels such as ethanol. This research has developed a range of techniques to handle waste biomass streams and highlighted the need to generate higher value products in addition to energy. This has been accompanied by research, funded by Innovate UK, into alternate waste streams and products. This fundamental research has identified a number of potential high value products from a range of waste streams arising from the food industry. It has also developed techniques to extract, purify and concentrate these products. Overcoming these technical barriers to the exploitation of waste is only the first step in the process. Commercial implementation is subject to another range of barriers such as capital costs to establish the process; cost effectiveness of the process; considerations of intellectual property and potential disruption to the current operations. This FLIP application is to allow a research fellow, who has been primarily responsible for this basic research at Nottingham, to spend a period of 18 months with New Food Innovation Ltd (NFI). NFI is a small company that provides a conduit and consultation role for the introduction of novel products and processes into the food industry. The company has an extensive network of contacts within the industry and has expertise in all areas related to the commercial exploitation of research. The company will provide the fellow with training in aspects of commercial exploitation. At the same time the fellow will develop business plans for those waste streams and products that have been identified from the preliminary research. These include the extraction and purification of proteins from potato waste and brewers spent grain that may have functionality in structuring foods. Another example is the preparation of pulp material from fruit waste that may have functionality in food structuring due to its high water retention properties. A small part of the placement will include the fellow visiting other research groups (at Nottingham and elsewhere) to help identify other potential waste streams and products. This FLIP will deliver a range of benefits to the interchanger and the partners. The interchanger, who is already skilled in the technical aspects of the research, will receive training and gain an appreciation of the equally important commercial barriers and how they may be assessed and crossed. This will benefit and inform their future research activities. Nottingham University, and the PI in particular, will be able to explore potential "pipelines to exploitation" for the existing research portfolio that it has accumulated and, along with other institution, identify other areas of investigation. NFI will have access to new technologies and products that they can assess and as appropriate help transfer these into the relevant industry.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

This project will unlock the potential of wheat grain heterogeneity. We will: 1) Develop a novel single seed phenotyping tool based on hyperspectral imaging technology (HSI) integrated with next generation machine learning 2) Explain the determinism of the variance of uniformity of single seed grain quality parameters and explore a broad range of both known, and novel and exotic wheat genotypes for previously undefinable unique single seed traits, this will allow breeders to target previously unavailable grain quality uniformity traits, as well as speed selection from segregating populations. 3) Deploy the single grain HSI technology as a novel molecular breeding tool by determining key genes controlling single grain quality uniformity traits and validating the candidate genes by developing lines with contrasting expressing of the novel genes which we will test in field experiments. 4) Demonstrate the application of the single seed phenotyping tool as a sorting technology at laboratory and pilot production scale for wheat. This will demonstrate the ultimate value of the approach by producing exemplar food products (bread, biscuit and malted wheat) with enhanced quality and health credentials and validating the findings through sensory and consumer insight testing. Ultimately this project offers the potential for breeders to significantly upgrade the UK wheat grain production, reduce the requirements to use imported wheat of millers, and enhance the nutritional quality and sensory quality traits of bread, biscuits and food products containing malted wheat for the consumer. The impact of this project will be very significant as sorting by hyperspectral classification for protein content would allow tighter segregation of the wheat supply chain into defined applications such as those that require lower protein (cakes, biscuits, pastry) from those that require higher protein with good protein quality and consistency and resulting good rheology (bread, pasta, high protein flour) and allow tighter adherence to supplier specifications in addition to reducing the need of imported wheat. At the highest capacities, a single sorting machine can process around 0.5 million tons per year, this indicates a very significant impact on the UK wheat industry with a relatively low-cost intervention, often in centralised milling sites. Furthermore, premium wheat with unique bread-making properties (e.g. elevated micronutrients, very high protein) and unique flavour potential through the malting process, will be sold with a price premium. If a further 20% of UK farmers growing bread-making wheat varieties were to achieve the grain protein market specification of 13% for the premium each year, it would be worth an extra £25 M per year to the UK agriculture sector.

Planet Earth is under severe stress due to imbalances in production, consumption, abuse and misuse of natural and man-made resources and, poor climate control. Our resources will be further stretched as global population increases from 7 billion today to over 9 billion by 2050. Industrialised nations are resource intensive societies heavily reliant of crude oil (petroleum) and gas for their energy, chemical and material needs based on traditional manufacturing processes. However, crude oil is a finite resource and its continued use represents a major environmental burden. Thus, development of new manufacturing processes and technologies based on alternative feedstocks, i.e., biobased and ideally produced as a waste or currently under-utilised, within the confines of a sustainable circular economy is of paramount importance nationally and globally. Food and drink is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK, employing approximately 400,000 people with a turnover of £76 billion. Food manufacturing is a complex process that is in the main linear- rather than circular-thinking. A staggering 9.9 million tonnes of food waste and food by-products are generated per year in the food industry alone, of which 56% is considered unavoidable. Unavoidable food supply chain wastes (UFSCW) lost after harvest and along the distribution and consumption chain have a dual negative environmental impact: undue pressure on natural resources and ecosystem services and pollution through food discards. However, current strategies for dealing with UFSCW are rudimentary and of low value: these include waste to energy (including incineration and anaerobic digestion), where possible; animal feed and bedding; compositing; ploughing back in to soil; and, least preferable, landfill. UFSCW is unique as a bioresource: this readily available biomass contains a treasure trove of unexploited, bio-based materials and chemicals, with a range of potential commercial applications. Our aim is to develop a whole 'systems' understanding of upgrading and re-utilisation of unavoidable food supply chain wastes, [namely: brewers' spent grain; pea vine waste; out of specification citrus fruits; and out of specification potatoes], as a source of functional food ingredients. These four feedstocks are representative examples such that our methodologies and findings will be applicable to a wider range of feedstocks. Furthermore, key performance indicators such as amount of waste, pattern of generation, possible contamination with other food waste, seasonality, etc. will be used to develop an appropriate whole system thinking around food waste collection, reprocessing, and production of new food products. The ultimate objective of our proposed research is to achieve a whole systems thinking "closed-loop" manufacturing of food products, with all input materials fully utilised. The ramifications and any unintended consequences associated with the proposed alternatives will be assessed, at an industry level, working with previously identified partners, and within a broader scope, determining the consequences of these changes in the entire UK food manufacturing sector, linking into the work of the highly networked EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Food.