Activity report - Free University of Bozen · Bolzano

6. Food processing and nanotechnology
Technical background
Research in food technology aims to optimise the way food is processed to obtain safer products with the
highest nutritional and organoleptic content. Either traditional or novel technologies will be investigated.
Aims
To develop novel ways to protect bioactives (such as antioxidants, vitamins, polyphenols, colorants, aromatics
etc.) and contrast their natural degradation. To understand the correlation between the processing
variables and the quality of food.
Main reference people
Matteo Scampicchio, Carlo Andreotti, Sergio Angeli, Lorenzo Brusetti, Stefano Cesco and Tanja Mimmo
Highlight
Electronic tongue design
M. Scampicchio
A system to evaluate bitterness and sweetness of beverages has been developed. The system is a continuous flow
system apparatus equipped with electrochemical and optical sensors (see scheme on the left), able to provide a
pattern of signals which correlate with the sensory characteristic of food beverages. The system, called e-tongue
(see picture), is fast, simple and reproducible, requires minimal maintenance and it allows high throughput of samples
to be analyzed (60-90 sample/h), without suffering from the typical drawbacks of human sensory analysis. The
system was successfully implemented in the quality control of beverage manufacturing as well as in the design of
new formulations even those fortified with bitter bioactive, such as epigallocatechin gallate (see PCA plot, right).