College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Engaging Students
Search for Chronic Disease Risk Factors in
Horses Leads to Clues about Prevention
Bringing New Life to an Eroding Stream
Value-added Soybeans to Save Money and Environment
Expanding the Learning Experience
Crossing Traditional Boundaries of Science
To Find Health Solutions
Hobby-size Planes May Be Future of
Early Warning System
Improving Local Economies Through Agritourism
Incentive Payments May Reduce Phosphorus Pollution
Protecting Milk’s Flavor and Nutritional Value
Finding a Healthful and Environmentally Friendly Use For Peanut Skins
Supporting Virginia’s Expanding Wine Industry
Virginia Tech Reaches Top 10 in Agricultural Research
Entrepreneurship Education Puts Business Owners in the Express Lane
E-learning Option for Place-bound Professionals
Financial Planning – From the Farm to the Household
New Graduate Program to Train Faculty in Agricultural Education Fields
Farmers’ Markets from Diverse Communities Benefit from Sharing
Families, Food, and Fun
Developing Disease-free Mosquitoes
Mites Make Right in Honduras – or Not?
Help for the Hippos of Zambia
Finding a Healthful and Environmentally
Friendly Use For Peanut Skins
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| Kumar Mallikarjunan, associate professor, and Tameshia Ballard, a graduate student, extract antioxidants from peanut skins. |
In 1947, a French researcher discovered the possible health and food additive benefits of peanut skins, a mostly wasted resource. A large-scale effort to extract nutraceuticals from these skins never launched after the French learned how to derive the same chemicals from grape-seed extract, a more abundant resource in Europe.
Kumar Mallikarjunan, associate professor of biological systems engineering, hopes to enhance the technology developed decades ago by the French and find new uses for peanut skins in order to add value to Virginia’s peanut industry.
His research team includes Tameshia Ballard, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering, and Sean O’Keefe, an associate professor of food science and technology.
"Even though we have a process to extract natural antioxidants and other chemicals with nutraceutical properties from peanut skins, food processors are not going to use this process unless it is cost-effective,” Mallikarjunan explains.
A typical peanut processing plant can produce about 17 tons of peanut skins per week. A pound of peanut skins is a cent per pound at most. By comparison, antioxidant extract is worth more than $80 per pound because of its biomedical importance and a push from the food industry to find natural ways to combat the effects of lipid oxidation.
Mallikarjunan’s team is trying to find the best ways to transform peanut skins into nutraceuticals such as antioxidant extract. This could not only boost Virginia’s peanut industry by dramatically increasing the value of the skins but could also make peanut processing a more environmentally friendly operation. Most peanut skins today are treated and sent to a landfill.