Technical Note: A Method to Quantify Prolamin Proteins in Corn That Are Negatively Related to Starch Digestibility in Ruminants

Compared with floury or high-moisture corns, dry corn with a greater percentage of vitreous endosperm has been demonstrated to be negatively related to starch digestibility and milk yield of lactating dairy cows. Starch granules in corn are encapsulated by hydrophobic prolamin proteins that are innately insoluble in the rumen environment. Corn prolamin proteins are named zein, and laboratory methods to quantify zein exist but are seldom employed in ruminant nutrition because of their arduous nature. In this study, advances in cereal chemistry were combined with rapid turbidimetric methods yielding a modified turbidimetric zein method (mTZM) to quantify zein in whole corn. Ten dry corns containing unique endosperms were evaluated using the mTZM. Corns with flint, dent, floury, or opaque endosperms were found to contain 19.3, 11.3, 5.8, and 4.9 g of zein/100 g of starch, respectively. The ability of mTZM to differentiate corn endosperm types as defined by least significant difference was 2.6 g of zein/100 g of starch. Ten high-moisture corns of varying moisture content were also evaluated using the mTZM. Zein content of high-moisture corns as defined by mTZM ranged from 8.3 to 2.8 g of zein/100 g of starch with a least significant difference of 1.2 g of zein/100 g of starch. The mTZM determined that zein contents of high-moisture, floury, and opaque corns were markedly less than those of flint and dent dry corns, indicating that mTZM has the ability to quantify starch granule encapsulation by hydrophobic prolamin proteins in whole corn.