On the Role of Starchy Grains in Ice Nucleation Processes

Little is known about the role of starchy food on climate change processes like ice nucleation. Here, we investigate the ice nucleation efficiency (INE) of eight different starchy food materials, namely, corn (CO), potato (PO), barley (BA), brown rice (BR), white rice (WR), oats (OA), wheat (WH), and sweet potato (SP), in immersion freezing mode under mixed-phase cloud conditions. Notably, among all these food materials, PO and BA exhibit the highest ice nucleation efficiency with ice nucleation temperatures as high as -4.3 °C (T₅₀ ∼ -7.0 ± 0.5 °C) and -6.5 °C (T₅₀ ∼ -7.2 ± 0.2 °C), respectively. We also explore the effect of environmentally relevant physicochemical conditions on ice nucleation efficiency, including different pH, temperature, UV/O₃/NO exposure, and various cocontaminants. The change in shape, size, surface properties, hydrophobicity, and crystallinity of materials accounted for the altered INE. The increase in shape, size, and hydrophobicity of the sample generally reduces the INE, whereas an increase in crystallinity enhances the INE of the sample under our experimental conditions. The results suggest that environmentally relevant concentrations slightly alter INE, indicating their role as catalysts in environmental matrices. The outcome of studies on the ice nucleation properties of these food-containing aerosols might help in the physicochemical understanding of other biomolecule-induced ice nucleation, which is still an underdeveloped research area.