Sustainability of the soybean industry relies on the growth of new industries and the continued improvement of seeds for utilization. Grower adoption and growth of the edamame industry has been slow in part due to insufficient information on its potential profitability and marketability. As such, the first and second objectives of this thesis aimed at 1) determining production costs of hand-harvested fresh edamame enterprise and 2) exploring consumer willingness-to-pay (WTP) for fresh, local, organic, and "on-the-stalk" marketed edamame. Sucrose, raffinose, and stachyose sugars hold tremendous implications for utilization of soybean seeds in livestock, soyfood, and probiotics industries. Current sugar phenotyping methods using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) are costly and inefficient. Therefore, the third objective of this study was to develop calibrations to predict sugar content using near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS). Results showed that labor accounted for 72% of production costs for edamame pods, which largely limits its profit potential. Mean WTP for fresh and local edamame exceeded their frozen and non-local counterparts by 94 and 88 cents, respectively. In addition, mean WTP for organic edamame exceeded non-GMO edamame by 33 cents. Pro-environmental attitudes appeared to be a consistent driver of WTP these three attributes. Meanwhile, a 40-cent discount for "on-the-stalk" edamame compared to pods indicates convenience may also be a factor in edamame marketability. Calibration development for sucrose and stachyose was successful, with R2cal, R2cv, RMSEC, and RMSECV of 0.901, 0.869, 0.516, and 0.596, and 0.911, 0.891, 0.361, and 0.405, respectively. Alternative methods should be investigated for quantification of raffinose. / Master of Science / Sustainability of the soybean industry relies on the growth of new industries and the continued improvement of seeds for utilization. Grower adoption and growth of the edamame industry has been slow in part due to insufficient information on its potential profitability and marketability. As such, the first and second objectives of this thesis aimed at 1) determining production costs of hand-harvested fresh edamame and 2) exploring relative marketing potential of fresh, local, organic, and "on-the-stalk" edamame. Sucrose, raffinose, and stachyose sugars hold tremendous implications for utilization of soybean seeds in livestock, soyfood, and probiotics industries. Current methods of quantifying sugar are costly and time inefficient. Therefore, the third objective of this study was to develop prediction models to estimate sugar content using near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS). Results showed that labor accounted for 72% of production costs for edamame pods, which largely limits its profit potential. Fresh and local edamame showed considerable marketing potential over frozen and non-local edamame. In addition, organic edamame showed marginal marketing benefit over non-GMO. Pro-environmental attitudes were an important driver of these results. Meanwhile, on-the-stalk edamame shows poor marketing potential, likely due to preference for convenience of food preparation in the U.S. NIRS prediction models for sucrose and stachyose showed strong predictive accuracy and low error, suggesting potential for implementation. The prediction model for raffinose, however, remained poor.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/101778 |
| Date | 07 January 2021 |
| Creators | Lord, Nilanka |
| Contributors | Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences, Zhang, Bo, Neill, Clinton L., Li, Song, Yin, Yun |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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