SRC – CHOPIN 2

Measurement principle

The SRC (Solvent Retention Capacity) method is a measure of hydration based on the increased swelling capacity of the flour’s different polymers when brought into contact with certain solvents – distilled water, 5% lactic acid (to measure the glutenins), 5% sodium carbonate (to measure the damaged starch) and 50% sucrose (to measure the pentosans).

These solvents are used to predict the functional contribution of each of the polymers to the quality of the flour (KWEON et al., 2011).

A fully automated and simple procedure

The SRC-CHOPIN is a completely automatic system, controlled by a touch screen. It combines a dedicated external scale, shaker, centrifuge, and a system for draining the supernatant.

1. The tubes are weighed with a special scale that is equipped with a scanner, which saves time and avoids possible input errors.
2. Syringes containing the solvent and tubes containing the flour are inserted into the machine according to the automatically predefined test scheme indicated on the screen.
3. All the operator has to do then is start the test. The next steps (shaking, centrifuging, and draining) are performed automatically.
4. After the final weighing, the results are instantly calculated and displayed.
    

SRC – Benefits

• Use a single test to analyze the flour main functional components that directly influence the quality of the final product: damaged starch (dough stickiness), glutenins (extensibility and elasticity) and pentosans (dough viscosity and final product volume)
• Understand rheological analyses better, optimize the final products quality (cookies, crackers, breads, etc.)
• Benefit from a method that is acknowledged all around the world and standardized (AACC 56-11)
• Use a test that is common in the whole cereal industry, from breeding to baking

​​​SRC-CHOPIN 2 – Advantages

‍The SRC-CHOPIN 2 is the only complete instrument on the market to run the SRC test automatically. It has its own standard methods, which automate the original manual method. It is less labor-intensive as it completely automates the steps of injection, shaking, centrifugation, draining and calculation.

SRC-CHOPIN 2 frees up valuable lab resources from tedious tasks, allowing them to perform more important ones while the analyzer is producing more accurate and reproducible data. Thus, it reduces operator involvement by 60%.

With the push of a button, the SRC-CHOPIN 2 measures a full SRC profile (water WA, lactic acidLAC, sodium carbonate CAR and sucrose SUC) for up to two flour samples. It identifies the solvent tubes, stores the flour weighing data, injects the solvents, shakes, centrifuges and drains the tubes, and then calculates all the results.

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