Future of Engineering

At Agricultural Research Service's (ARS) Eastern Regional Research Center (ERRC) in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, researchers in the Crop Conversion Science and Engineering Research Unit are at work on pectin, a polysaccharide component in the cell walls of fruits and vegetables. Polysaccharides are polymers made up of many simple carbohydrates (sugars) linked together into long, continuous molecules. Pectin is currently valued for use as a gelling and thickening agent, beverage stabilizer, and fat substitute.

Most commercial pectin is obtained by extraction from citrus peels, but sugar beet pulp is also rich in pectin. About 1.5 million tons of dry beet pulp—an enormous untapped source of a valuable polysaccharide—are generated annually by U.S. processors.

At present, most pulp is dried and sold as animal feed at little profit because of the costly energy required to dry it for storage and shipment.

But sugar beet pectin has different chemical features than citrus pectin, so it could find new uses, especially in industrial products. Beet pulp is also rich in other highly functional cell wall polysaccharides that could be isolated and put to use. To increase profits for sugar beet growers and processors, the Wyndmoor researchers are working on new processes to efficiently isolate beet pectin and associated polysaccharides and find higher value uses for them.

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