Food analysis

Principal contact for food analysis:

Gordon McDougall [1]

QTS-25 Texture Analyzer (Brookfield Engineering Labs, Inc.)

The QTS-25 is a self-contained bench top instrument providing a realistic measurement of the physical properties of a wide range of foods, industrial materials and personal care products  using ‘Compression’ or ‘Tension’ forces with a 25kg Load Cell.

CT3 Texture Analyzer (Brookfield Engineering Labs, Inc.)

The CT3 is a more recently developed Texture Analyzer with all the same capabilities as the QTS-25 but more compact and portable and fitted with a 100g Load Cell. 

Rapid Visco Analyser (RVA; Newport Scientific)  

A cooking viscometer, the RVA performs viscosity testing of foods, cereals and starches, and provides rheology properties of the tested materials using multi-cycler heating and cooling.

Used for analysis of:

• Starch: full starch pasting test in 13 minutes, including native and modified starches.
• Flour milling and baking: starch quality, gluten quality, amylase activity, weather damage.
• Grains, tubers, roots: wheat, corn, rice, sorghum, potato, tapioca, sweet potato, arrowroot and sago.
• Brewing: malting barley, barley storage, Kilned malt, brewing adjuncts.
• Extruded foods and feeds: degree of cook in snacks, breakfast cereals, animal and aquaculture feeds.
• Protein quality: wheat gluten, skim milk powder, whey protein concentrate, soy protein.
• Noodles and pasta: Italian style pasta, Asian white salted and yellow alkaline noodle quality.

Agilent 1120 Compact HPLC System

This is a general use HPLC fitted with a PDA detector and is suitable for method development up to semi-preparative purification.

Contact: Gordon McDougall [2]