Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), Mission 4 Component 2 Investment 1.3, Theme 10.
Supercritical encapsulations of food micronutrients
Highlights
Coordinator
Innovation of food (bio)processing using smart and mild technologies and fermentation to improve nutritional quality while ensuring safety and environmental sustainability throughout the shelf life of foods. Nutritional quality and biodiversity are targeted through both advanced and sustainable processes (including encapsulation) to preserve and improve at-risk (micro)nutrient composition of relevant food categories and exploiting microbiological and biotechnological applications to impact on nutritional quality. Such (bio)technological approaches (e.g., fermentation, enzyme treatments, etc.) are validated by process markers also directed to ensure food production safety and quality targeting new food habits (e.g., ready to eat food and novel food consumption) and sustainability, promoting production efficiency and utilisation of alternative sources (in connection with Spoke 2 and 3).
Systematic evaluation of existing food processing gaps and constraints in terms of impact on nutritional quality, safety, and sustainability in the national scenario (M12)
Systematic review of biotechnological approaches to enhance functionality of different food products within the relevant food categories and possible constraints (M12)
Development or improvement of at least 3 technological approaches to innovate food production (including cooking and shelf life) in terms of nutritional quality, safety, and sustainability (M24)
Identification of new process and product markers (M30)
The demand for nutritional and functional foods is increasing due to the change in consumer consumption patterns. However, important (micro)nutrients (i.e., carotenoids and lipophilic vitamers) have low solubility, low stability, and poor handling characteristics. Encapsulation is an advanced and sustainable process that can solve this issue. Currently, spray- and freeze-drying are the benchmark among food and pharmaceutical industries. However, drying is also very energy intensive, time consuming and with a large environmental footprint. Recently, supercritical fluids and enzyme treatments are promising mild technologies to encapsulate lipophilic actives into structured powders and cutting the energy consumption of traditional drying operations.
Development of micro-encapsulation processes based on supercritical fluids. Lipophilic vitamers and provitamins will be encapsulated at mild temperatures by particle from gas saturation (PGSS) process. The hydrophilic core will consist of fruit by-products (i.e., apples, grapes pomaces, etc.). Active ingredients consist of lipophilic bioactive, like vitamers and provitamins. The (mild) technological processes will be evaluated by measuring the resulting physical and chemical stability.
Development of structured lipids by mild (mild) technologies (enzyme treatments). The structuring process consists of turning low melting vegetable oils (like peanut, corn, olive, etc.) into high melting fats by glycerolysis process.
Validation of the processes by novel product/process markers, i.e., by measuring the resulting product stability during cooking and storage, and their shelf-life.
Thanks to the lab facilities available at the NOI Park (Bolzano), this research group will investigate the effect of mild technologies to encapsulate (micro)nutrients for ensuring safety, sustainability, and extended shelf-life. With this study, the expected results are:
Encapsulate food bioactive with mild technologies like supercritical fluids and enzymatic procedures.
Understand the effect of the encapsulated powders on the resulting (oxidative) stability of (micro)nutrients.
Identify new quality markers to evaluate safety and stability and environmental sustainability of the new mild technological approaches.
