NEW MAIN FERMENTATION TO SUPPORT MARYLAND CRAFT BEVERAGE, FOOD INDUSTRIES
Wine and cheese. Beer and fermented pretzels. Notice piled up with Sauerkraut.
There would be no of these charming combinations without the bubbling biological process of fermentation, in which yeast and other microorganisms face nutrients such as sugars, fats and proteins to transform food into something magical, or at least, tasty. And now there is a new couple: the University of Maryland and a undergraduate student in the science of fermentation. Offered by the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (AGNR) Both at the University of the Park and in the Universities of Shady Grove, the main debutants of four years, this fall aims to increase knowledge around this ancient way of preparing and preserving Food, while giving students knowledge to deliver it to new uses such as biofuels and climate-friendly pharmaceutical development. No less important, it aims to promote a range of food and beverages industries in charge, of distilleries that multiply quickly around Maryland to long-standing cheesemen. Read also : The rover discovered a unique breed on the Red Planet If that sounds a food network, or, or as a good study course to avoid headaches by mathematics, I'm sorry, the "science" part of the name is real. "This is a lot of a stem (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), with a bit of chemistry, microbiology and mathematics in it," said Frank Coale, Professor Agn and Dean Assistant of Strategic Initiatives that directed development. of the new track. "It will give students a very good background in the biological sciences, and will even prepare them to request the School of Medicine, if that is what they want." Student surveys who took an AGNR course on the history of fermentation suggest that what they really want is to work with fermented dairy products, think of yogurt, kefir and cheese, followed by wine and fermented mass. Perhaps, surprisingly for college students, beer fell below on the list of favored study topics, after pharmaceutical products and fermented meat products, such as naturally cured sausages and tied with probiotics. While they put the bases to propose the greatest widespread enthusiasm among the producers of food, beverages and agricultural of Maryland, along with the will to provide their harshly lived knowledge. Fermentation has been vital for human survival from preservation milk, meat and grain for winter, or the creation of slightly alcoholic beverages safer than contaminated water sources, but having a higher UMD will inject new ideas and They will train an expert workforce, said Mike Koch, co-founder and president of Firefly Farms, a Garrett County cheesemaker. "We could not be more support from college efforts to defend this program," he said. "Long-term help to create the same type of energy that has begun around the manufacture of cheeses in Vermont, at the end of New York or Wisconsin, where the granting universities have invested much in the cheese carving". Max Hames, Sagamore Spirit Distillery Operations Manager, a Baltimore Baltimore whiskey distiller founded by Kevin Plank '96, said fermentation scientists could help to deepen the subtleties of microorganism interactions and sources of Food in fermentation tanks that can help separate a good whiskey from a great one. "We are not making a simple yeast fermentation, there are many different creatures at work," said Hames. "We are always marking in our fermentations in a daily rank, and having a solid understanding of what is happening in all that complexity is important." Two departments of Agnr, nutrition and food sciences and the architecture of science and the landscape of plants, will collaborate to offer the greatest. The domain of the plant plant is the raw material for fermentation: grains for bread and beer and vegetables used in Sauerkraut, Natto or pickles, said the President of the Department and Professor John Erwin. |