Journal of Cereal Science 50 (2009) 305

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Journal of Cereal Science

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Editorial

Enzymes in grain processing

Cereals are one of the most important sources of food for the worlds population, providing energy, protein, vitamins, minerals and ber. A major challenge today for cereal biotechnologists is to achieve optimal processing while meeting specic requirements for improving human health, nutrition, and food quality, to increase sustainable energy supply, and to provide safer and more protable industrial inputs. In addition, cereal grains are often a basal component of animal feed. The use of enzymes in cereal processing has become increasingly important to maintain or improve the quality of product. Chemical technologies are being replaced or modied with enzyme-driven processing, and these areas can only improve through further hindsight into controlled use and selection of enzymes and their structurefunction relationships. The European Symposium on Enzymes in Grain Processing (esEGP) series was launched in 1996 by TNO. It has consolidated its position in the eld through successive Symposiums held by VTT (1999), KU Leuven (2002) and INRA-Nantes (2005). The 5th Symposium was organized by the Institute of Food Research (IFR), Norwich and held at Norwich City Football Club, 31st March2nd April 2008. These meetings provide a forum for researchers and technologists across academia and industry to share in recent progress and facilitating the exchange of ideas and shaping the future directions for the use of enzymes in the processing of grains. esEGP5 was attended by 110 participants from across Europe, the USA, Canada, Japan, and Chile. We had seven technical sessions and three poster

sessions, with 36 oral presentations (including 10 plenary speakers) and 40 poster presentations. This special issue of Journal of Cereal Science includes topics ranging from the preparation of novel carbohydrate microarrays for high throughput screening to the production and control of enzyme activities in basic and applied cereal research. Taken together these papers present a unique overview of this active and important area of research. We wish to thank Danisco, Novozymes, Biocatalysts Ltd, Megazyme, Puratos, SternEnym GmbH & Co, PBL, Healthgrain, AACC International, C & E, IFR Food and Health Network, and the Institute of Food Research, Norwich for nancial and administrative support for this Symposium, as well as the authors for contributing papers for this Special Issue." Craig B. Fauldsa,*, Nathalie Jugeb, Birte Svenssonc a Centro de Investigaciones Biologicas (CSIC), Ramiro de Maeztu 9, E-28040 Madrid, Spain
b

Institute of Food Research, Norwich Research Park, Colney, NR4 7UA Norwich, UK

c The Technical University of Denmark, Sltoft Plads (Building 224), DK-2800 Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses: cfaulds@cib.csic.es (C.B. Faulds); nathalie.juge@bbsrc.ac.uk (N. Juge); bis@bio.dtu.dk (B. Svensson)

0733-5210/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jcs.2009.11.001