Food and Water - Harvest Unit

Professors-in-charge: Drs. Walter Hyde, Rameshwar Kanwar, Patricia Murphy, and Gary Osweiler

Bacterial toxins, drugs, pesticides, and other toxins are major problems of food and water safety; this unit is dedicated to improving sophisticated methods of detection and elimination of toxins from food and water. It is involved in work with xenobiotic investigations of organic agricultural herbicides, insecticides, rodenticides, mycotoxins, drugs and drug metabolites, anabolic steroids, antibiotics and antibacterial compounds, inorganics such as heavy metals, fertilizer-related ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, sulfate, cyanide, and carbon monoxide. Thrusts for study include decreasing current food and water residues/pollutants from crop and livestock production systems; evaluating risk from products currently not well-characterized (e.g. mycotoxins, bacterial toxins, nutraceuticals and herbal supplements); utilizing animals and wildlife as in situ monitors of water contamination; and comparisons of toxicological risk from low-input vs conventional or intensive agriculture. The unit deals with difficult samples such as animal tissues, decomposing tissues, plant material, grains and grasses, and mixed feedstuffs. The combined efforts of veterinary analytical toxicology, food sciences analytical and research technology, and the research and development strengths of the U.S. Department of Energy Ames Laboratory coordinate to search for new methodologies to replace or augment recognized procedures.

• Dr. W. G. Hyde and his scientific staff in both the Racing Chemistry and Veterinary Analytical Chemistry programs in the College of Veterinary Medicine have considerable expertise in detection, quantification and confirmation of toxicants in a variety of biological tissues and fluids, including:
• Xenobiotic extraction and concentration using liquid-liquid extraction techniques
• Solid phase extraction techniques and supercritical fluid extraction
• Analyte detection and identification using immunoassay screening with fluorescent polarization, ELISA and RIA techniques
• High pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with ultraviolet and fluorescent detection
• Gas chromatography (GC) with a large variety of specialized detectors
• Mass spectroscopy (either GC or HPLC) with electron impact or chemical ionization with APCi or Electrospray
• Various sample introduction capabilities and ionization formats for multi-dimensional mass spectrometry.
• Dr. P. A. Murphy, Department of Food Sciences and Human Nutrition represents significant analytical expertise for phytotoxins, including Fusarium mycotoxins.
• Her laboratory has generated a novel detoxification mechanism for Fumonisin mycotoxins that has been successful in vitro and in vivo using two animal models.
• Expertise includes soy phytochemicals used in studies lowering human plasma cholesterol and researching new health opportunities from soy protein consumption.
• The Midwest Forensics Resource Center (MFRC) is, by design and function, an outreach organization, serving the crime laboratories and rural law enforcement agencies of Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri (sponsored by the National Institute of Justice) and the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors. They focus some of these training efforts on food safety and security issues including raising awareness of vulnerabilities and methods for protection, training in evidentiary procedures for those involved in incident response and agricultural and veterinary diagnostics, and awareness of available resources for forensic analysis related to food safety issues. The INSTITUTE makes use of the MFRC as a focus and communication mechanism for the University with forensic scientists and rural law enforcement programs in the Midwest region. It builds on this program by expanding the forensic/law-enforcement focus to include food safety and security issues that are important to the agricultural nature of the region.
• Public demands for cleaner air and water have made agricultural impacts on the environment a top priority. The faculty in the Department of Agricultural and Biosytems Engineering have extensive expertise in monitoring, modeling, and controlling agricultural environments, including studies of:
• animal and agricultural worker environments;
• environmental factors affecting crop and animal growth;
• grain and seed storage environments;
• impacts of crop and livestock production on air and water resources;
• modeling of air and water pollutant movement; and
• bio-conversion of agricultural byproducts to minimize environmental impacts.
• CNDE (Center for Nondestructive Evaluation), with a worldwide reputation in the development of novel sensing processes, has a pool of scientists with a diverse background and experience in using physics in material characterization and sensing in various fields such as aviation industry, medical diagnostics, and precision farming. CNDE scientists use various physical phenomena including optical diffraction/reflection, sound propagation, magnetic methods, and ionizing/nonionizing radiation and electromagnetic techniques to develop characterization methods and sensors for problem specific implementations.

Affiliated faculty and their areas of research and expertise are listed below.