Isabella Alvarenga, DVM

Title

PhD Student

Company

Kansas State University

The effects of sorghum fractions on pet food extrusion, digestibility and antioxidant capacity in dogs – Isabella Alvarenga, DVM, PhD student at Kansas State University, explains findings of a study to mill sorghum into different fractions and explore their processing attributes and health benefits in dogs. Sorghum is an interesting option as a novel pet food ingredient due to its unique characteristics: it grows in semi-arid regions, it is non-GMO and gluten-free, and its seed coat and pericarp are rich in antioxidant phenolic acids and polyphenols. Alvarenga’s work demonstrated that sorghum flour and sorghum mill-feed may provide new functional and nutritional options for use of sorghum in modern pet foods.

Alvarenga earned her DVM from São Paulo University (USP) in Brazil and recently completed her master of science in Grain Science at Kansas State University in the laboratory of Greg Aldrich, PhD. She is currently a doctoral student in this same lab and plans to explore in more depth the effects of processing on the physiological utilization of various starches. The work she is presenting was part of her master’s thesis research.