Functional metabolites of leafy vegetables as ingredients for innovative foods

Functional Foods (FFs) have become a trend and a part of a healthy lifestyle (Ozen et al., Nutr Rev 2012). It is believed that regular consumption of FFs might help taking good care of health and preventing non-communicable diseases, like heart diseases, stroke, cancer and diabetes (Baião et al., J Funct Foods 2019). The main components of FFs are bioactive compounds, like prebiotics, probiotics and symbiotics, whereas the FFs’ ingredients also include soluble and insoluble dietary fibres, vitamins, minerals, essential amino acids, unsaturated fatty acids and secondary plant metabolites (e.g. phenolics, flavonoids) (Shvachko et al., Molecules 2021). With the aim of developing new FFs, interesting advancements in this direction are represented by the possibility of exploiting the metabolic pathways of plants (e.g. by biotechnological approaches, such as Genome Editing), favouring the accumulation of nutraceutical compounds in edible organs, particularly in leafy vegetables.

The project development foresees different actions, listed as follows, also reporting the relative timeframe (PM – Project Month):

• Literature review (PM 1-36).
• Characterizing the natural content of selected nutraceuticals in commonly consumed leafy vegetables (PM 4-12).
• Implementing the CRISPR/Cas9 method to enhance the biosynthesis of selected nutraceuticals in leafy vegetables, for the generation of innovative FFs (PM 12-28).
• Application of “molecular farming” approaches to produce ingredients for innovative functional foods (PM 12-28).
• Assessing the overall quality profile of functionalised leafy vegetables (PM 18-36).