Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Development and application of advanced analytical procedures to assess the quality of relevant food product categories in the national context and corresponding analogues implemented according to task 4.1.1 and 4.1.2
Application of foodomic approaches for the assessment of composition parameters in at least one existing (M24), two reformulated (M32) and implemented (M36) products of each food category according to task 4.1.1. and 4.1.2.
Nowadays, functional foods represent one of the most promising areas in the food industry. One example of the components that are added to foods to render them functional is phenolic metabolites (Caleja, et al., Curr. Pharm. Des., 2017). The importance of these chemicals in nutritional quality makes the development of accurate, versatile, and rapid analytical tools (i.e., biosensors) necessary to not only detect and quantify their presence in many foodstuffs but also assess the antioxidant efficacy of phenolic compounds. For example, these analytical tools can be used to evaluate the process parameters on the quality of the phenolic compounds extracted by using green extraction procedures (e.g., supercritical fluid, microwaves, ultrasounds) from waste materials (Panzella, et al., Front. Nutr. 2020- Roselló-Soto et al., E Food Res. Int., 2020).
The research will involve different activities:
Use of the developed biosensing techniques for the determination of the phenolic metabolites in different food categories. The proposed activities aim to enhance analytical capabilities applicable to different food categories for the optimization of innovative and green technological food processes.