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.
The use of plant biostimulants as a sustainable approach for increasin...
Reformulation or improvement of relevant food products in the national context in order to: a) implement the nutritional characteristics also by reducing antinutrients or using bioprocessed ingredients (from raw products to ingredients) and limit the use of undesirable components (e.g. by using bioactives) along the food system b) improve food formulation and composition based on consumer perception and needs identified for specific target groups (in connection with Spoke 5 and 6) c) promote clear and ad hoc labelling as an information tool (in connection with Spoke 1 and 7) to increase the willingness to buy improved foods d) guarantee safety and affordability of new products (in connection with Spoke 1 and 3).
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).
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
Selection of raw materials/ingredients with improved nutritional characteristics and limited undesirable components (M12)
Development or improvement of at least 3 biotechnological approaches to innovate food production in terms of nutritional quality, safety, and sustainability (M30)
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.
In the quest for more sustainable agricultural approaches, in the last decades, the attention of the scientific community has been attracted by the possibility of manipulating the phytochemical profile through the inoculation of specific beneficial PGPR bacteria or non-microbial biostimulants to improve the quality of agricultural food products.
Among other crops, tomato (Solanum lycopersicon L.) and apple (Malus domestica (Suckow) Borkh.) are good models to investigate both the ability of biostimulants to modulate functional quality, being rich in antioxidants like polyphenols and carotenoids. In fact, biostimulants have been shown to induce the expression of stress tolerance mechanisms in plants including reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavengers. This evidence supports the use of selected products to enhance stress tolerance while promoting the accumulation of functional components.
Selected microbial biostimulants (a PGPR consortium), as well as commercial non microbial products (a seaweed extract, chitosan, and a protein hydrolysate) will be tested as biostimulants used in post-harvest.
Apple and tomato fruits at commercial harvest, each from three different cultivars, will be fully characterized in terms of phytochemical profile at the beginning of standard shelf-life conditions and over different time points.
To this aim untargeted metabolomics will be used to investigate the profile in B-group and C vitamins, flavanols, flavonols, flavones, hydroxycinnamic acids, lignans, stilbenes, tyrosols, and small-molecular-weight phenolics, and by lipidomics for carotenoids and tocopherols. Thereafter, the antioxidant activity will be characterized in vitro (DPPH, FRAP, ABTS, metal chelating) and some enzyme-inhibitory assays will be determined (tyrosine kinase, Ach esterase, glycosidase).
The most promising treatments will be further investigated to define differences in bioaccessibility using in vitro digestion and fermentation models. Gut microbiota analysis and metabolomic analyses will be conducted in digested and fermented samples.
The overall result will be the definition of sustainable strategies to increase the shelf-life in a sustainable manner, while sustaining the development of foods with an enhanced functional quality. More detailed results are:
