PhD scholarship in Extending the Shelf Life of UHT Plant Protein Beverages

The projects seeks to improve the stability and sensory profile of long life beverages rich in plant based protein. This will enhance the industry partners product range and further enable the uptake of plant based protein for tasty and healthy convenience products. The project aims to improve understanding and overcome the negative effects of the secondary lipid oxidation products and Maillard reaction in UHT plant protein beverages. This may lead to the extension of shelf life of these products furthering export opportunities. This project will involve the creation of model beverage systems for thorough chemical characterisation via mass spectroscopy based metabolomics, and shelf life studies. These will be mainly performed at the pilot plant and analytical facilities based at RMIT, Bundoora and CSIRO Werribee. The final aim of the research is to develop food safe methods to block the chemical pathways of malodorous/browning reactions in high protein UHT beverages.