Food Tech Graduate Wins 2011 FNRI Undergraduate Competition

by Jerry Kent O Abad

with fellow DOST-based alumni (Raz Navarro, Bonbon & Jerry Kent). Photo grab from Fem’s FB page.

with the judges and other contestants

Eufemia Lilia Anne del Rosario, a 2011 BS in Food Technology graduate of SOTECH, won the top prize in the 2011 Undergraduate Thesis Competition of the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) held last July 4-5, 2011 at the DOST Compound in Taguig City. She bested 7 other entries from UP Diliman, UP Los Banos and Visayas State University, among others. 

Fem presenting her paper

This annual two-category competition was first held in its 33^rd Seminar Series in 2007 by the FNRI, the country’s lead R&D agency in food and nutrition, to provide young professionals the opportunity to contribute relevant innovations to R&D.


In Ms. Del Rosario’s undergraduate thesis entitled “Partial Characterization and Utilization of Low-Methoxyl Pectin Extracted from Bell Apple (Syzygium samarangense) in Ice Cream”, she discovered that the lowly tambis has the potential to be used as stabilizer in ice cream making.  


The panel of judges was composed of industry experts from Del Monte Philippines Universal Robina Corporation, and the Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technologies.  One judge expressed great interest in her research and hoped that follow-through studies could be done at SOTECH, and  “put more effort into locally making, extracting and producing pectin so we can have our own” because pectin is a very expensive ingredient that the country usually imports from Israel, Brazil and Thailand.


Dr. Jose Ali Bedaño served as Ms. del Rosario’s thesis adviser and her defense panel included Prof. Emeliza Lozada and Prof. Kurt Waldo Sy Pieco. ■