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.
Food by-products and microalgae a source of novel food
Coordinator
New breeding techniques like genome editing will be used to produce customised safety food and to generate lines with an improved nutritional profile covering both compounds with beneficial properties and reducing anti-nutritional components. Biotechnological processes will be used to eliminate toxic compounds to produce new food/beverages from novel substrates. Tailored (bio)technological approaches will be set up to valorise alternative protein sources (i.e., cricket powder, micro- and macro-algae, single cell proteins, and yeast biomasses, agri-food and fishery by-products, insect-based foods. Set- up of a safe system of cellular agriculture for the development of novel food, like cultured meat and cheese in connection with Spoke 2 and 4)
Report on the optimised fermentation protocols for the development of novel foods (M36)
Protocol for the development of novel and innovative food/beverages (M36)
By 2050, the global population is predicted to reach about 10 billion. The growing population puts additional pressure on resources and interferes with achieving the Sustainable Development Goals proposed by the United Nations (United Nations 2030 Agenda Sust Develop 2015). Given the actual interest towards a more sustainable dietary habit, a shift to novel functional food is needed to control human diets. Being an excellence source of bioactive compounds, food by-products could be a potential ingredient in novel food formulations (Tlais et al., Molecules 2020.). In this scenario, fermentation is proposed as a green tool for recycling food by-products and concerting them into a value-added (Tlais et al., Food Chem 2021). On the other hand, the application of microalgae into food is a trend in the last years. Bioactive compounds found in commercial microalgal biomass may play important roles in novel food with favorable outcomes for human health (Ścieszka et al., LWT 2021). Since microalgae demonstrated effective and significant results as a fermentation substrate, exploitation of food by-products in presence of microalgae by microorganisms (lactic acid bacteria and yeasts) might be a promising strategy to design novel food and beverage with novel features, in terms of nutritional, rheological, sensory, and functional attributes.
Within the general objectives mentioned above, the best candidates of plant-based substrates, by-products and microalgae for microorganisms will be selected to generate potent formulations with multifunctional properties. In parallel, lactic acid bacteria and yeasts will be screened for high pro-technological performance (adaptation and acidification), functional (release of antioxidants, bioactive peptides, hydroxy fatty acids, phenolics and other antimicrobial compounds), rheological (viscosity and texture) and sensory properties (production of aroma and volatile organic compounds). This preliminary screening will help in establishing the optimal fermentation protocol for novel ingredients that incorporate bioactive compounds from several sources. The next screening will focus on establishing the optimal process conditions not only to fortify the novel fermented ingredients in novel food and beverage formulations but also maximize production protocol at pilot plant level. The novel products will be evaluated in terms of nutritional (protein digestibility), rheological (viscosity and texture), sensory (aroma compounds), and functional (bioactive compounds, antioxidants and antimicrobial compounds) attributes. Finally, the shelf-life of these products will be assessed monitoring the spoilage microorganisms during the storage up to the spoilage thresholds using the more appropriate traditional culture dependent methods in relation to food physico-chemical characteristics.
This project will generate novel plant-based ingredients derived from food by-products or/and microalgae for novel food and beverage formulations, through tailored fermentations, enriched in bioactive metabolites having multifunctional properties. The novel fermented formulations (at least two) will satisfy consumers and industrial needs for sustainable diet. The results will confirm the power of fermentation in recycling food by-products into value- added products, transforming inherent precursors into beneficial microbial metabolites and consequently generating novel products with high nutritional, functional and sensory properties. The most interesting results will be published in scientific journals.
