This book presents the proceedings of the Workshop on Plant Biopolymer
Science: Food and Non-food Applications, which was held in Nantes at the
Congress Centre on 24-27th June 2001. This meeting followed in the footsteps of
the one organised in September 1998 in Montpellier at ENSAM, in collaboration
with Professor Stephane Guilbert. The main idea behind this first meeting
was that scientific approaches dealing with the structural or functional properties
of macromolecules are rather similar whatever the type of biopolymer -
protein, starch or cell wall polysaccharide. As this concept is now widely accepted,
and since this first meeting was highly successful, it was consequently
decided to organise this second ‘Plant biopolymer workshop’ here in Nantes.
Nantes was chosen as the location because of its INRA Research Centre,
which is renowned for its basic and applied research on plant biopolymers,
starch, proteins and cell wall polysaccharides. The main objectives of the Nantes
Centre in Plant Science first of all concerns the biosynthesis of macromolecules
and assemblies in planta, secondly their structural characteristics and related
physico-chemical and functional properties, and thirdly with their behaviour in
multiphasic systems in relation to end-uses in food and non-food applications. In
addition, human nutrition is also considered.