The prairies are seeing more and more pulse production as demand for environmentally sustainable plant-based foods grows. Even so, Dr. Jitendra Paliwal says pulses can be one of the most underrated crops – they are a quality protein source, highly nutritious, and require fewer resources to produce than other sources of protein. But did you know that what happens between the field and the store shelf has a lot do with quality? Listen in to learn how his research program is maximizing the benefits of pulses, including how cancer detection technologies are revolutionizing bulk storage.
Jitendra Paliwal is a professor of Biosystems Engineering and Associate Dean (Graduate Programs and Academic) in the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the University of Manitoba. Over the last two decades, he has established an internationally renowned research program that exploits the opto-electronic properties of agricultural commodities for their quality monitoring and preservation.
The prairies are seeing more and more pulse production as demand for environmentally sustainable plant-based foods grows. Even so, Dr. Jitendra Paliwal says pulses can be one of the most underrated crops – they are a quality protein source, highly nutritious, and require fewer resources to produce than other sources of protein. But did you know that what happens between the field and the store shelf has a lot do with quality? Listen in to learn how his research program is maximizing the benefits of pulses, including how cancer detection technologies are revolutionizing bulk storage.
Jitendra Paliwal is a professor of Biosystems Engineering and Associate Dean (Graduate Programs and Academic) in the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the University of Manitoba. Over the last two decades, he has established an internationally renowned research program that exploits the opto-electronic properties of agricultural commodities for their quality monitoring and preservation.
Welcome to the Manitoba Agriculture and Food Knowledge exchange podcast. I'm your host Jordan Cieciwa and today we're going to be covering the increasing consumption of pulses through optimal storage, milling and processing. Now it's important to note that, uh, as dietary changes have taken place, there is more and more people looking to different options for their diet and to increase more or a wider variety of food in their diets. So we've got ourselves an expert today who can explain what's going on in the storage and the processing of pulses. Today, we've got Dr. Jitendra Paliwal. He's a professor of Biosystems Engineering at the University of Manitoba, and I'm not going to do nearly enough to introduce this expert, but we're going to try. Dr. Paliwal's focus is on the quality assessment and preservation of cereals oil seeds, and pulses. It's very interesting to note that Dr. Paliwal was part of a collaboration in 2018, that I'm going to be asking about this project because it sounds amazing. They actually, the team utilized the cancer detecting imaging techniques for remote monitoring of grain bins. So we've got somebody that really knows what's going on when it comes to pulses. Dr. Paliwal, well, thanks so much for joining us. Let's jump straight into this and why have pulses become so important as of late in the food sector?
Jitendra Paliwal:Thanks so much Jordan, so pulses I would say one of the most underrated crops that we have, they've been consumed across the world for the longest time, but not so much in the Western diet, that they've found their way. And lately people have realized that there are lots of health related benefits of consuming pulses, as everybody knows that protein is, you know, one of the most important components of any diet. And most times, you know, when you think of protein, meat, eggs, dairy but very recently people have realized that plant proteins could be another very important ingredient that could be incorporated into. There are several reasons for that. One is that plant proteins are much more lower cost to create and they are... pulses are highly nutritious, they have the right mix of starch and protein matrix is ideal for bioavailability, for human beings and animals alike. And they're much more environmentally friendly way of growing protein. And that's the reason why there has been an increased awareness amongst the consumers, people who are, who will care about our planet, people who are looking for healthy, nutritious alternatives for animal-based proteins, I think pulses and fit that gap really nicely. And when you look at the overall economics, the entire protein industry worldwide is somewhere worth about$25 to$30 billion. And when you consider that, you know, this could actually... in terms of the economics, this could be a major key player in providing another source of very low cost proteins, which is highly nutritious and which is very environmentally friendly. And that's the reason why there's been an increased interest in plant proteins.
Jordan Cieciwa:Now just quickly, because I think most people are familiar with the term pulses, but if you could just give a few examples of plant products, Manitoba plant products that, or things that we produce in Manitoba that fall into that category.
Jitendra Paliwal:So in terms of the... Pulsars are leguminous crops and as most of us have studied in high school science that leguminous crops are the ones that could do nitrogen fixation, the ones that the nitrogen gets converted into proteins. And that's how, you know, they become protein rich. Some of the important leguminous crops would include, you know, peas beans lentils. And when you look at, you know, our own economy, we were recently been growing a lot of peas and lots of red and green lentils here in the prairie provinces.
Jordan Cieciwa:Now, of course, once you've taken these products off the field, storage is important, and this is something that I wanted to touch on because this collaboration you had in 2018, which is only... I mean, that's only two years ago that you were doing this. What did you guys... what did you and your team do with the cancer imaging and how is that important, or why is that study and just studying storage in general, important to pulse growth.
Jitendra Paliwal:Good storage of cereal, grains, and pulses, and most of the cultural commodities in the North American system, you know, most of the stuff is stored in bulk format and very large bins. And there was a time about 30- 40 years ago when the farm storage was not really that important. It was mostly stored at, you know, farm elevators and then terminal elevators. But that system over the years have changed. And most of the storage is now happening on farm because of that... the sizes of the grain bins have tremendously increased. It has almost, you know, quadrupled in the grain bins have increased in diameter, they are so big that it's very difficult to look at the core and find out what the conditions are for safe storage, because once any kind of a gricultural commodity goes into storage a nd b ins, it has... it's a natural product, which has, w hich i s naturally viable. And it, depending on the temperature conditions, depending on the moisture of the commodity and the environmental relative humidity. In the North American prairies were blessed by lower temperatures, which are a natural way of inhibiting any kind of insect or mold crawls. But when you have very large bins, the core of the bin could never cool down enough, and that can create problems with, you know, the generation of hotspots where mold can start to grow. And then, you know, from that point on, you can consider it to be a slippery slope that things get progressively worse. So it's extremely important to look at the core or the entire profile of the bin to find out what the conditions are inside the bin. So a few years ago, some of my collaborators in electrical engineering, they came to me. Human tissue imaging, like... they were trying to identify very tiny tumours that take place during breast cancer. And when we were doing this work together, because my area is imaging, and I asked a question. I said that, can we adapt this technology to look into very large scale grain bins and identify some hot spots that are really pockets of high temperature, high moisture content accumulated in a very physical space. And that's where the idea started. And then, my collaborators... and then we went together looking into this problem, and then we were able to adapt this technology, which was to identify breast cancer tumours that were a millimeter or 2 millimeters in size, looking at these pockets of wet moist grain in a very large grain bin. And this is now a technology that's been commercially available to farmers. So this is where it all started.
Jordan Cieciwa:Wow. Wow. That's fascinating. So when you're looking at this, how big of a bin can you image and say image with results, you're comfortable with.
Jitendra Paliwal:In terms of the technological application, there isn't really a limit on how big of a bin you can image. You tweak the frequency of the radiation because we're working with radio waves. So you can tweak the frequency a little bit, depending on the size of the bin, the main constraint comes into the economics of it. If you have a bin that's just too small, the technology may not be worth, in terms of how much money you spend, and the return that you obtain on your investment. But once you get into larger bins of grain that are stored in really large bins, that is where the technology is very beneficial in terms of the return on investments. So this is a technology that's right now, it's still under development. We're still trying to fine tune it. But it's largely applicable to big bins.
Jordan Cieciwa:Interesting. Now I'm a Prairie kid, I grew up in Manitoba. I've lived here my whole life, and I've grown up literally next door to wheat fields, my whole life with all that's gone on in wheat and wheat production. Do we need to repeat that? Especially things like let's say, for instance, milling and the production of wheat can not just transfer to pulses or do we need new research there?
Jitendra Paliwal:Unfortunately not. We've been milling wheat for, you know, I would say maybe 200 years now. And over the last 100 years, the research in milling has really very well-defined the characteristics of the flowers that could be obtained by using different types of metals, by tweaking the different parameters of say a roller mill and the different fractions, they are very finely characterized. And that's why, you know, when you're looking at the production of wheat flour, we know already as to what type of particle size is required to make bread, what type of particle size is ideal for making pasta, noodles, cookies, all that is already that knowledge base already exists because we've been working with wheat for, you know, tens of years, but when it comes to pulses, that hasn't happened, we cannot apply the same wheat milling, directly to pulses. And there are several reasons for it because the protein starch matrix is different. The bioavailability of pulses depends on the size of the flower. And I think that the final and the biggest reason is you can't really use a pulse flour as a substitute for wheat flour. They have to be there because of lack of gluten. You can't create a bread out of a hundred percent, a hundred percent pulse flours. So the best way to incorporate pulses into our diets would be to use these as fractions, mix them with cereal flowers, or mix them with other types of stuff to create end products. And that is where the blending is important. And it turned that is where the milling is important. So it's important, very important to know what kind of milling would produce the ideal particle sizes of the flower and ideal characteristics that are a consequence of starch damage that that would create the best end product. And that's the reason why we cannot use wheat milling research, straight ported over into pulse milling, and then use it.
Jordan Cieciwa:So we've got a multi billion dollar industry with pulses. We've got potential for Canada and Manitoba to really become a leader. And it's people like you that are doing the research to help us get there. What are you currently right now doing in the research field for pulses and how do you kind of... how do you see that helping Canada in the food sector?
Jitendra Paliwal:There are a number of studies that are taking place in this area, and this would include understanding the, you know, the functional and nutritional value of whole pulses. All pulses could be consumed as snack foods once they are all boiled. And then you have to understand that the different of fractions, what can they be used for in terms of using as ingredients for different types of end products, they can use 10% of a particular type of pulse flour and blend it with, you know, cookie flour to create cookies that are more nutritious. And then all of these things could very well be understood based on the micro structural analysis, which is my area of expertise. So there, you're looking at very fine changes that occur in these pulse seeds as a consequence of different types of pre-treatment, different trial types of processing, so that we want to retain and do not want. You know, nobody wants to eat something that has really no nutritional value. So we don't want to overcook it, we don't want to over mill it. We want to make sure that the nutritious properties or nutritional properties of the raw material is retained by the time it becomes an end product. So we're looking at all of these, and we're looking at the consequences of long term s tock p iling, because as you store biological material, including including agricultural commodities, what happens is that the quality goes down. So you have to be able to know what are the ideal conditions for storage so that you retain nutritional and functional properties of the commodity that you're dealing with.
Jordan Cieciwa:Very interesting, this Dr. Paliwal, you're leading some great research and part of a greater search for how to work with pulses, which I can't thank you enough as a Canadian interested in health and always concerned with making sure I'm getting the best quality food. I can't thank you enough for putting your time into this and for explaining briefly what you're up to. So thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Jitendra Paliwal:Well, thank you so much. It is my pleasure, and I feel myself very fortunate that, you know, I'm doing research at a time when this very important area of healthy foods is so hot and so popular that people are actually looking towards the scientific community to provide them with solutions so that they get the best possible, best nutritious food that they can. Thank you so much.
Jordan Cieciwa:I absolutely agree. And thank you. We'll talk again soon.