CHAPTER XII - CORN AND SORGHUM STARCHES: PRODUCTION

Abstract

Publisher Summary Corn has been the staple food for countless generations of natives of North and South America. Corn has reached its present state of development through continual mutations, hybridizations, segregations and selections by random, natural processes, and by conscious selection. A number of types have developed by this process, which differ primarily in the structure of the grain. Grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor Moench) is a cereal grain also known in some localities as milo, milo maize, or kaffir corn. The sorghum plant resembles the corn plant, but the grains, about the size and shape of No. 5 shot, are borne on a terminal, bisexual rachis (head). Mature corn or sorghum kernels are unique, well-organized entities that exist for the purpose of reproducing the species. Descriptions of their structures and compositions are helpful in understanding the process of disruption that is achieved during the wet-milling process. Grain sorghums are considered to be inferior to corn for food, feed, or industrial uses. They require less water for growth than corn and, therefore, are grown in more arid regions. The wet-milling of grain sorghum is similar to that of corn, although novel methods of extracting starch from sorghum have recently been investigated. Wet milling, as a process to recover starch, is essentially a method of disrupting the corn or sorghum kernel in such a way that the component parts can be separated in an aqueous medium into relatively pure fractions.