The scent of a ladybug
Alongside droughts and frosts, winemakers are facing a new, unlikely enemy: ladybugs. This plant-friendly bug produces a characteristic liquid with an odour that winemakers say changes the aroma and flavour of their wines. With ladybug populations on the rise, more of them are accidentally ending up in wine and tainting it. Chemists at Iowa State University assembled a panel of human “sniffers” and a sensitive gas chromatography sensor to help them identify the 300 different odours a ladybug can give off. Of these, only four contributed strongly to the “ladybug scent.” Scientists hope research into this can lead to the elimination of the offending odour. Entomologists say that the rise of ladybugs is the result of a rise in soybean aphids-one of the ladybugs’ favourite prey. The soybean aphid is an invasive species in the Midwestern United States whose booming numbers are quickly making ladybugs a nuisance to vineyards and other plantations.
Source: American Chemical Society news release
-Sandy Huen
Sulphur makes food safer?
Ever since the presence of the suspected carcinogen acrylamide in food was first confirmed in 2002, scientists, food experts and the medical community have been investigating ways to reduce the chemical’s risk. Acrylamide forms when foods like potatoes, wheat and other cereals, and (sorry to tell you this) coffee are cooked at high temperatures. So far, the main solution for reducing acrylamide levels in food has been lowering cooking temperatures. Now, scientists from the University of Reading have come up with another way to reduce the amount of acrylamide in our foods. They propose changing the growing environments of plants, with the aim of reducing levels of asparagine, a precursor of acrylamide. The scientists discovered that plants grown in low-sulphur soil had drastically higher amounts of asparagine than those grown in soil with higher sulphur levels. By controlling the plant’s growing conditions, researchers say we can limit the amount of acrylamide that makes it into our food.
Source: Society for Experimental Biology Annual Meeting
-Mayce Al-Sukhni
