The Food Research Institute, NARO (NFRI) is conducting a broad range of studies on foods from basic to applied, in order to produce a safe and healthy diet, provide appropriate scientific information on food to the public, and contribute to governmental policymaking for food and development of the food industry.
Specifically, we conduct not only basic research and state-of-the-art technological development but also research that meets the ever-changing social needs, focusing on the following 3 research areas, with the mutual cooperation of 5 research divisions.
 1) Study on the three functionalities of agricultural products and foods (nutritional functionality, palatability and physiological functionality) and the development of technologies for their effective utilization
 2) Development of technologies to ensure the safety, credibility and quality of agricultural products and foods
 3) Development of distribution and processing technologies with an aim to maintain or improve the quality and functionality of agricultural products
We, as members of the sole national institute specializing in integrated food research, will continue our efforts to be a more open and active research organization, aiming to be the hub of industry-academia-government cooperation in the country and as an international center.
In this special issue, five young researchers from each research division are going to introduce recent research topics at NFRI.
We hope the special issue helps you to understand the roles and activities of NFRI.

View full abstract

A variety of powdered food products, including instant soup, instant beverages as well as seasonings, are frequently manufactured into granule form, since fine powder has poor flowability and dispersibility, which causes difficulties in measuring and packaging of powder and causes clumping when it is dissolved in water or other media. Among the several granulation methods, fluidized bed granulation is a major process for producing the instant soup and beverages because of the excellent solubility of the granule products. In the fluidized bed granulation process, an aqueous solution of polysaccharide is usually sprayed as a binder to the powder to bridge the particles, however, an increase in the moisture content of granules often spoils the product quality and elongates successive the drying period.
This article summarizes a new fluidized bed granulation method that was developed to improve the performance of the process by using Steam-Water Two-Phase (SWTP) binder. The steam has been traditionally known as an efficient binder for granulation since it rapidly bridges the particles by condensing and wetting the surface of particles. However, controlling the granule size is difficult and coarse agglomerates are produced in the fluidized bed granules with steam binder. It is presumably because the larger granules are grown more rapidly than smaller ones by the steam binder. The larger granules have a higher probability of contacting with other particles, which leads to faster granule growth by the steam binder while the granule growth rate is limited by the presence of droplets when a liquid binder is used in fluidized bed granulation. In SWTP binder granulation, the water droplets nucleate growth by bridging the fine particles, steam consequently condenses on these nuclei and efficiently grow them. In SWTP binder granulation, the amount of water sprayed on the powder decreased to 40~84% to produce granules having an equivalent size to that obtained by conventional fluidized bed granulation using a liquid binder.

View full abstract

In Japan, the percentage of the population aged 65 and over was 27.3% in 2016. This is the highest in the world, and a further rise is expected over the next several decades. As the pace of aging in Japan is in a phase that no other country in the world has yet experienced, there is a high demand for anti-aging foods. However, it is difficult to find and develop novel anti-aging foods because it takes a long time to accumulate the evidence.
Here I show a model to evaluate the anti-aging properties of foods by monitoring progression of age-related hearing loss (AHL) in mice. It takes less than 6 months to perform the experiments and it is not necessary to age the mice before the experiment. Using this model, we demonstrated that consumption of heat-inactivated Lactococcus lactis strain H61 for 6 months delayed the onset of AHL in mice. Recently, we have also screened functional agricultural products using this model, and found that eggs and some vegetables delayed AHL in mice. I discuss application of the AHL model to human studies and also describe perspectives for personal functional foods to support our health in a smart future society.

View full abstract

Because of the rapid improvement of analytical instruments and computer power, acquisition and analysis of huge amounts of data has become common, including “-omics” research such as genomics and metabolomics. Data mining is a concept of the process for the discovery of interesting and useful patterns and relationships in large volumes of data. The term “data mining” has a large range of meaning and much in common with other related words such as big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and statistical analysis. Data are normally acquired as a matrix in which rows correspond to samples and columns correspond to variables. The objectives of data mining are to find differences among samples (rows) and exploration of important variables (columns) which characterize that difference. There are several methods in data mining to achieve these objectives. Among them, principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares (PLS) regression analysis are overviewed in this article. Two applications of fluorescence fingerprint (FF) measurement combined with data mining are introduced as well. FFs are a set of fluorescence spectra acquired at consecutive excitation wavelengths, producing a three-dimensional diagram with many variables. The first example is the classification of Awamori spirits by PCA and the second one is the prediction of the aerobic plate count on a beef surface by PLS regression analysis.

View full abstract

To achieve regional growth in addition to mitigation of global warming and development of a recycling-based society, we are developing systems for advanced utilization of rural biomass resources, such as non-edible portions of agricultural products and food wastes.
Here, we introduce our sugar and enzyme production systems for practical use of rural cellulosic resources on a small scale in regional areas.
1) For sugar production from regional feedstocks, we constructed a very simple process, ‘CaCCO (Calcium Capturing by carbonation (CO₂)) process’ which is based on Ca(OH)2-pretreatment. In this process, after the pretreatment step Ca(OH)₂ is neutralized by carbonation to precipitate the Ca ion as CaCO₃, which remained in the vessel during the subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis. The CaCCO process does not require a solid-liquid-separation step, and thus represents a novel pretreatment method to utilize not only cellulose but also xylan, starch, and sucrose in biomass. Furthermore, we proposed an improved CaCCO process that could reduce energy and water consumption and preserve feedstocks consistently. These simple processes would allow us to produce cost-effective and economically-friendly sugars on a small scale in rural areas.
2) For enzyme production from regional biomass, we developed an efficient production system of the saccharification enzymes for cellulosic materials, via continuously fed cultivation of glucose-depressed Trichoderma reesei mutants using soluble sugars. In this system, only soluble sugars are used as main carbon source(s) and enzyme inducers. The composition of enzymes produced from the mutants could be readily optimized by controlling the components of sugars and the pattern of addition, facilitating tailored production of enzymes in response to a diversity of feedstocks and conversion processes. We also found that relatively inexpensive sugars like the hydrolysate of cellulosic materials, starch and sucrose can be applied in this system. Furthermore, the semi-continuous cultivation, defined as continuously fed cultivation with managing culture fluid volume, allowed us to produce quality/quantity-controlled enzymes consistently and for the long term.

View full abstract

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident resulted in the release of large amounts of radioactive materials into the environment. Agricultural and livestock products were widely contaminated, mainly in the eastern region of Japan. The Japanese government immediately established provisional regulatory values for radioactive cesium (Cs) in foods after the accident, and requested local governments to implement the inspection of foods based on the values. The inspection has continued since the accident, so that the radioactivity level in all foods provided for consumption has been managed to be lower than the regulatory values. Information on the behavior of radioactive Cs during food processing and cooking is extremely useful for proper risk management by the government, the manufacturing management of the food industry, and risk communication with consumers. Numerous studies have been conducted on the behavior of radioactive Cs during food processing and cooking of domestic agricultural foods in Japan after the nuclear power plant accident. This report provides information based on the research results in which the radioactive Cs contained in foods was removed or diluted by processing or cooking methods that we usually perform in our kitchen.

View full abstract

Based on the traditional use of calyx parts of eggplants for treatment of warts in Japan, a clinical trial of an ethanol extract (EP-E) was performed on the basis of informed consent. Twenty seven patients diagnosed as having common warts were treated by repeated EP-E application to their surfaces. In 17 cases more than 80% reduction was observed. Effects were remarkable for female and/or young patients. Influence of EP-E on genital warts was further examined since these are also induced by human papilloma viruses. A total of 45 patients (40 with genital warts of the external genitalia, three on the vagina and two during pregnancy) was treated by direct application once per week or two weeks. Complete elimination of the lesion was observed for 32 patients (71%) and more than 80% reduction was observed for all cases. To clarify mechanisms, cytotoxicity of the EP-E against various cell lines established from human cancers was examined. The extract inhibited cell growth of human ovarian cancer (HRA) cells, which are of epithelial cell origin similar to common warts. By activity-guided fractionation, 9-oxo-(10E, 12E) octadecadienoic acid (9-EE-KODE) was isolated as a cytotoxic constituent from the calyx of eggplants and shown to have 5 to 10-fold more potent cytotoxicity against HRA cells than against other cell lines examined. Calyx was found to contain higher levels of 9-EE-KODE than edible parts of eggplants. Finally we demonstrated that 9-EE-KODE induced apoptosis in HRA cells via the mitochondrial regulation pathway.

View full abstract

Many medicinal herbal liquors (MHLs) originated in monasteries in medieval times in the Western world and spread widely across to the world, but now the emphasis is primarily on use as alcoholic beverages to enjoy aroma and taste. In China, there are records of MHLs in classical medical books and drug compendia from the beginning of the A.D. epoch, liquor preparations being treated in the same way as traditional Chinese medicines. Japanese MHLs were derived from examples introduced from China, their use gradually spreading from the upper classes to the common people. Especially in the Edo period, brewers throughout Japan produced and sold various MHLs as distilled spirits with high alcohol content. In Oriental medicine, traditional Chinese prescriptions require the composition principle of “Kun (principal drug), Shin (assistant drug), Sa (adjuvant drug), Shi (guiding drug)”, and MHLs also should comply. Alcohol is regarded as one ingredient, generally both as Kun and Shi and it is related to the essence of MHLs. However, in the Meiji era, when the Japanese government basically abandoned Oriental medicine and adopted Western drug formulations, this essence of MHL was neglected, and approved efficacy was restricted to one category named “Adaptogenic Tonic” where it has remained until the present.

View full abstract

By means of a field survey in Southeast Asia, we clarify the method of using rice to make fermented rice noodles. We introduce the commonalities between eating buns in Vietnam, Kha nhom Jeen in Thailand, Mohinger in Myanmar, Khaw Poon in Laos, Num banvuchock in Cambodia, and sour rice noodles in China.
Fermented rice noodles are a process in which microorganisms alter rice. An important factor in creating noodle strips is to gelatinize “shitogi.” Furthermore, we introduce the idea of making noodle strips. We also provide recipes for dishes made of fermented rice noodles and the ingredients and methods for making the sauces to be used along with these dishes.

View full abstract