Topic 2: New foods – Fostering innovations in food design, processing and supply via demand-and-supply reorientation
The complementarity of the two teams, including chemists, food technologists, bioengineers, and pharmacologists, ensures the optimal valorisation of citrus agri-food waste, providing both pharmacological and toxicological information useful to develop novel nutraceuticals beneficial to human health and technological properties for the use of biomacromolecules as additives in edible films, food formulations, and other products. The use of organic Citrus x clementine agri-food waste as a source of nutraceuticals or additives beyond project objectives stands out as an economically and environmentally friendly choice fostering a circular economy.
The input and contribution of Italian partners, including chemists, food technologists, agricultural economists and pharmacologists, ensures the achievement of the optimal valorization of citrus agri-food waste, providing both pharmacological and toxicological information (useful to develop novel nutraceuticals beneficial to human health) and technological properties (for use of biomacromolecules as additives in edible films, in food formulations, and in other products). The use of organic Citrus x Clementine agri-food waste as a source of nutraceuticals or additives beyond project objectives stands out as an economically and environmentally friendly choice fostering a circular economy.
The many challenges will be addressed as follows:
1. green extraction procedures that will provide novel insights on the valorisation of waste;
2. standardized pharmacological, toxicological, and safety analysis will assess not only their CDV activity but also the risks for human health, to predict which extracts are safe and less likely to encounter development hurdles, thus protecting humans and avoiding attrition during nutraceutical development;
3. technological approach will assess the quality aspects of newly formulated nutraceuticals and functional foods, along with potential consumers’ acceptance and preferences; moreover, tests on the stability of the qualitative properties mainly related to biocompounds activity will define the best shelf-life conditions, which can be applied during large industrial-scale production.
