The 2021 Summer Online Lecture Series: Digital Agriculture and Future Food are established due to the severe COVID-19 pandemic prevailing in the world with the aim to promote international communication and broaden the sight of students from the College of Biosystem engineering and Food science. On August 18^th, Dr. Yangchao Luo, an associate professor from the department of nutritional science at University of Connecticut, gave a report entitled “Phytoglycogen: A Food-derived Carbohydrate with Natural Dendritic Nanostructure for Food Safety Applications”. The event was host by professor Hui Zhang’s research assistant Meiyu Chen.

Dr. Luo’ s research experience, focusing on: (1) nanotechnology and bio-delivery, (2) applies material science and engineering principles to understand physical and chemical interactions among various natural biomaterials at the nanoscale and design novel edible nanocarriers for delivery of bioactive compounds in functional foods. His report included his recent work on phytoglycogen, with emphases on extraction, functionalization, and application. He also gave a summary of his research projects at his lab, including lipid-biopolymer hybrids, hydrogels, high internal phase Pickering emulsion, and development of nano-delivery systems.

Nanotechnology has been applied in food research studies for decades. The construction of varieties of organic (solid-lipid nanoparticles, polyelectrolyte complexes, liposomes, micelles, dendrimers) or inorganic (magnetic nanoparticles, mesoporous silica) nanoparticles have been used for carriers to deliver micronutrients or bioactive compounds. Phytoglycogen (PG), a natural dendrimer with α-1, 4- and α-1, 6- linked glucose units, is a novel food material isolated from corn seeds. Due to its hyperbranched structure, it is believed to be used as a novel delivery system for bioactive compounds. Dr. Luo’s lab successfully developed a simple and ecofriendly extraction method using dehulling, pH adjustment and autoclaving to obtain PG nanoparticles with a yield of more than 98%. They modified PG with hydrophobic chains and compare the efficiency of different encapsulation methods using curcumin as a model. Moreover, they design dendritic nanocomplexes via supramolecular interactions between modified PG and other food biopolymers for encapsulation of natural antimicrobial compounds, eugenol and thymol. They also explore the practical applications of obtained nanocomplexes in the preservation of fresh produces and successfully inhibited bacterial growth and biofilm formation.

Apart from research work, Dr. Luo shared his experience on submitting manuscripts to the publishers and introduced two new journals named Journal of Agriculture and Food Research and ES Food and Agroforestry of which he is the founding editor-in-chief.

After report, Dr. Luo had a communication and interaction with students regarding questions on the digestion fate of PG during oral processing and grafting efficiency during PG modification using different anhydrides. Students all showed appreciation to Dr. Luo’ s lecture and his experience on submitting the manuscripts.