Wheat milling efficiency and flour quality are fundamentally governed by kernel fracture behavior during mechanical processing. This study systematically investigated the fracture characteristics of wheat kernels through a multi-stage experimental approach. Rupture tests comparing shear and compression loading revealed that shear reduced fracture energy by 40%, with vitreous kernels (16.13 mJ) showing greater resistance than floury types (10.45 mJ) at 13% moisture. Microstructural characterization revealed distinct fracture modes: vitreous kernels fractured intercellularly, while floury kernels fractured intracellularly—quantified via fractal geometry (vitreous: fractal dimension D = 1.262; floury: D = 1.365). Controlled bran removal experiments demonstrated that outer bran layers provide 40% of total fracture resistance, with vitreous kernels depending primarily on endosperm properties beyond 5% peeling, whereas floury kernels exhibited progressive strength loss with each layer removed. These findings enable optimized milling strategies: shear-based systems for energy efficiency, minimal processing (≤5% bran removal) for vitreous wheat, and moderate peeling (≤10%) for floury wheat, ultimately advancing both scientific understanding and industrial practice in cereal processing.

Aqueous enzymatic extraction (AEE) can simultaneously separate oil and protein. However, a stable O/W emulsion is present in the AEE process, which is not favorable for extracting oils. This study optimized the use of heptanoic and octanoic acids for demulsification in aqueous enzymatic extraction. The optimal condition for demulsification, including a fatty acid ratio of 1:3 (heptanoic acid to octanoic acid) with 1.00% addition, a reaction time of 40 min, a temperature of 70 °C, and a solid-to-liquid ratio of 1:5, resulted in a demulsification rate of 97.95% ± 0.03%. After demulsification, the particle size of the peanut emulsion increased, while the absolute potential value and conductivity decreased. The type and content of proteins decreased, and the tertiary structure also changed, with tryptophan residues buried within the proteins, shifting the system from a polar to nonpolar environment. The microstructure of the emulsion changed and the emulsion transformed into W/O. To summarize, composite fatty acid had a significant effect on the demulsification of emulsion.

Soybean is the most widely cultivated genetically modified (GM) crop worldwide, making the detection of GM soybean oil a critical issue for food safety and trade compliance. Such detection depends on whether DNA survives oil processing, yet how processing affects DNA in refined oil has remained unclear. Here, we tracked DNA mass and gene integrity along a complete industrial soybean oil processing chain, from seed to deodorized oil, and compared three degumming methods at laboratory scale. DNA mass dropped sharply during crude oil extraction and degumming, the larger part of the loss occurring between the meal and the crude oil, leaving refined oils with extremely low levels (2.60 × 10⁻² to 7.43 × 10⁻¹ ng/g). During degumming, most DNA moved from crude oil into the oil sediment, with removal efficiency decreasing in the order enzymatic > acid > hydration degumming, in line with phospholipid removal. The lectin and cp4 epsps genes degraded mainly during solvent extraction and deodorization. These findings reveal where GM DNA is lost or destroyed along the chain, show that fragments below 200 bp survive to fully refined oil, and identify enzymatic degumming as the most effective treatment for removing DNA (at the lab scale). Testing of refined soybean oil therefore requires short amplicons, and a negative result obtained with longer targets does not demonstrate the absence of GM material.