Milling Process

A process for treating crop kernels, comprising the steps of:

• a) soaking kernels to produce soaked kernels;
• b) grinding the soaked kernels;
• c) treating the soaked kernels in the presence of a polypeptide having protease activity,
• wherein step c) is performed before, simultaneously with or after step b),
• and said polypeptide is a serine protease of the peptidase family S53 or selected from the group consisting of:
• (a) a polypeptide having at least 80% sequence identity to the polypeptide of SEQ ID NO:
• 5, SEQ ID NO:
• 6, or the mature polypeptide of SEQ ID NO:
• 2 or SEQ ID NO:
• 4;
• (b) a polypeptide encoded by a polynucleotide that hybridizes under high stringency conditions, or very high stringency conditions with
• (i) the mature polypeptide coding sequence of SEQ ID NO:
• 1,
• (ii) the mature polypeptide coding sequence of SEQ ID NO:
• 3,
• (iii) the full-length complementary strand of (i) or (ii);
• (c) a polypeptide encoded by a polynucleotide having at least 80% sequence identity to the mature polypeptide coding sequence of SEQ ID NO:
• 1 or SEQ ID NO:
• 3;
• (d) a variant of the polypeptide of SEQ ID NO:
• 5, SEQ ID NO:
• 6, or the mature polypeptide of SEQ ID NO:
• 2 or SEQ ID NO:
• 4 comprising a substitution, deletion, and/or insertion at one or more (several) positions;
• and
• (e) a fragment of a polypeptide of (a), (b), (c) or (d) having protease activity.