Natural products in agricultural foods, beverages and plantss

GALLO, B.; BERRUETA, L. A.; PRIETO-PEREA, N.; VICENTE, F.; SASÍA, A.; ALONSO SALCES, ROSA; FUSELLI, S. R.

Leioa

Jornada; V Jornadas de Investigación de la Facultad de Ciencia y Tecnología; 2016

Facultad de Ciencia y Tecnología de la Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU)

Determination of the chemical composition of foods and beverages has a huge interest from many points of view. A deep knowledge of natural products in foods can lead to improve nutritional quality, manufacturing methods, or to detect geographical origins, bad practices, adulterations and frauds.Polyphenols are a very important group of natural products due to their ubiquity in the Plant Kingdom, and their interest as a key to explain many food properties such as flavor, bitterness, astringency, aroma and color, besides their known beneficial effects on human health (e.g. lower risk of heart diseases and cancer).In this regard, and after successful works in beverages such as ciders and wines, apples, fruit juices, edible oils, coffee, microalga, cianobacteria and medicinal plants, our research group is currently working in the following projects:?Anthocyanin and tannins analysis in red wines and in extracts of freeze-dried grape pomace in order to (i) evaluate and control vinification procedures; (ii) study the influence of microoxygenation and ionic exchange techniques on the vinification procedure; (iii) evaluate the influence of enological factors and climatology on different grape varieties and monovarietal wines; and (iv) be used as quality parameters related to local Protected Designation of Origin, such as wine color, which is one of the most important parameters directly related to anthocyanins.?Volatile compounds analysis in red wines by fast gas chromatography: Volatiles are responsible for wine aroma, which is a feature that provides information to the wineries about the course of vinification, a critical process for the final quality of wine. The effect of enological techniques such as microoxygenation and ionic exchange, as well as the use of minor native grape varieties on wine aroma are being studied in order to evaluate the influence of climate change on wine quality.?Characterization of the polyphenolic profiles of agricultural food products determined by HPLC-DAD and UHPLC-DAD-QTOF/MS: Polyphenolic composition together with chemometrics (PCA, LDA, PLS-DA, PLS, neural networks) provides useful tools for quality control, authentication and detection of adulterations of agricultural food products (fruits, vegetables, fruit derived foods, cider, wine, honey, olive oil); detection of bad practices in food manufacturing (olive oil); optimization of production technologies to obtain foods (lettuce) with high phytochemical quality; and development of novel rapid methods to determine polyphenol composition of agricultural foods (wine, honey) by vibrational spectroscopies and regression models.?Multivariate data analysis of the polyphenolic profiles of apples, together with QTLs and molecular markers for the selection of genotypes with high fruit (apples) quality and interesting agro-technological properties such as resistance to biotic agents and regular productivity; with genome-wide association (GWAS) for the detection of important SNPs in the formation of phenolic compounds belonging to the leading polyphenol families as a tool for the selection of new varieties with specific phenolic composition in the process of genomic selection in new generation of crossovers improvement; and for the technological characterization of apple varieties. ?Valorization of agricultural food by-products (apple pomace, grape pomace, olive pomace) generated during manufacturing processes by food industry to obtain high value-added bioactive molecules for the food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, as well as for veterinary use, for instance in bee health to control, prevent and fight bee diseases such as American foulbrood or varroasis.?Encapsulation of polyphenols and polyphenolic extracts of agricultural food by-products for different applications, food additives, veterinary use, nutraceuticals, etc.?Natural products in plants, microalgae and cianobacteria in the search of high value-added bioactive compounds for the food, pharmaceutical and/or cosmetic industries.