Alaa Alaizoki has been doing his Eng.D at Swansea University in collaboration with Klöckner Pentaplast (kp) as part of the Materials and Manufacturing Academy (M2A) initiative (funded by WEFO, EPSRC and industry). He completed his MSc in Food Safety, Hygiene and Management from University of Birmingham in 2015. He has published a paper in International Journal of Food Microbiology.

The poster will address the challenges facing fresh meat packaging including meat drip and confinement odour. It will also review the current solutions developed for scavenging exuded drip in meat packaging and their impact on packaging recyclability. Early findings of rheology study of meat drip will be included for better understanding of flow properties of meat drip, and hence, developing future solutions for scavenging the meat drip and extending shelf life of the packaged meat. This research aims to promote the development of a future meat packaging as more enviromentally friendly and sustaiable.

Lorenza Conterno has completed his PhD at the age of 28 years from Torino University (Italy) and postdoctoral studies from Cornell University (USA), at the Food Science and Technology Department. She is the leader of the Fermentation and Distillation Group and of the Food Technology Research Area at the Laimburg Research Centre. She has published more than 30 papers in reputed journals.

During cider making, apple juice and wine may undergo t o spontaneous clarification due tothe natural presence of pectic enzyme. However,with dessert apples pectin haze may occur due to the partial breakdown of pectin and due to the lack of tannins. This happens more often if the apples used are stored post harvest. Pectic enzyme addition may be a solution to avoid this undesired haze, however the effectiveness, production cost and methanol liberation from the enzymatic pectin hydrolysis have to be taken into account. In order to test the performances of three enzyme preparations, apple juice was used before and after fermentation carried out by Saccharomyces cerevisiae selected strain. The apple juice or wine treated samples were compared to the non-treated equivalent used as control. All experiments were performed in triplicate. Sedimentation kinetics, residual pectins, turbidity and methanol concentration were used to evaluate the enzymatic treatment. All enzyme preparations were effective in removing pectins from both the apple juice and the cider. Broken pectins precipitated at a similar speed after all enzyme preparation additions. No interferences in the fermentation of the clarified juice were observed. The methanol content of the clarified juices and ciders was similar to the control showing that the treatment released a very limited amount of methanol. Pectin and turbidity tests show that no residual pectins were left after all the enzyme treatments and that the ciders were efficiently clarified. The influence of one enzymatic treatment on the presence of volatile organic compound on the cider was also monitored.

Giulia Chitarrini has completed her PhD at the age of 29 years from Fondazione Edmund Mach in collaboration with Udine University. She is postdoctoral researcher at Laimburg Research Centre, Laboratory for Flavours and Metabolites. She has published 6 papers in reputed journals.

Fermented beverages are at least as old as the earliest civilizations and are consumed in many cultures; they consist of wines, beers, mead and other products. In addition to wine, widely produced in the Alto Adige region (Italy), other fermented drinks are made on a small scale by several local enterprises. The aim of this study was to support the local production of fermented beverages, exploring the possibility to apply a common method to measure the volatile organic metabolites generated during fermentation. The matrices considered were cyders, oat beer and mead. Cyders and oat beer were made using three and two different yeast respectively. Mead was produced using two different honeys (honeydew honey and blossom honey). The products have been evaluated investigating the chemical standard parameters (°Brix, pH, residual sugars, ethanol); the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were analyzed to better understand the differences between fermented beverages made starting from similar matrices and to connect the chemical results to the flavor quality outcome. A GCMS-QP2010 SE gas chromatograph mass spectrometer (Shimadzu) was used for VOCs analysis. The compounds were separated on a capillary ZB-WAX column (30 m x 0.25 mm i.d. x 0.25 μm); headspace was sampled using 2-cm DVB/CAR/PDMS 50/30 μm fibre from Supelco.The method used allowed to analyze different fermented matrices for a qualitative analysis with the identification of specifics compounds related to the different yeasts or the different used honeys. We were able to identify 36 compounds in cyder samples, 40 compounds in oat beer and 62 compounds in mead. These results will allow us to better understand the local products and to contribute to the overall quality of the final product.

Paraskevi Mitlianga has completed her PhD in Biological Chemistry from University of Ioannina Medical School and postdoctoral studies from MDA Anderson University of Texas Medical School at Houston. She now is a full professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Department of Chemical Enginnering, University of Western Macedonia, Greece.

Spices are important in all cuisines, as they give each cuisine a unique aroma and unique taste. They give each meal a rare, nice, and sweet taste and smell. Spices are low in calories, and fairly inexpensive. Their use is necessary, especially in people who follow a weight loss diet program as they reduce the added fat in a variety of recipes in this way. Many of the spices also have antioxidant properties and substitute the various preservatives that often harm human health, which the public does not know very well. The aim of this study was to assess the antioxidant properties of different spice extracts. A total of 9 packed and 27 unpacked samples representing different types of spices were collected randomly from different North Greek market and bazaars (Xanthi, Thessaloniki, Florina). The spices included in this study were black pepper (Piper nigrum), turmeric (Curcuma longa), ginger (Zingiber officinale), cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum), pimpinella anisum (Illicium verum), macis (Myristica fragrans Houtt.), tsimeni (Trigonella foenum-graecum), saffron (Crocus sativus) and clove (Syzygium aromaticum). The FOLIN-CIOCALTEU method was used to determine the total phenolic content while the determination of the antioxidant capacity of samples measured using the ABTS and DPPH methods. According to our data the variations of antioxidant capacity measurements of spices are extremely different from region to region. This may be due to the conditions of storage, processing time or even the quality of the sample itself. High antioxidant capacity was found in clove spices, cinnamon, saffron and pimpinella anisum. The cinnamon, pimpinella anisum, saffron and clove spices showed a high total phenolic content in all cases, while the maces and turmeric spices showed a high total phenolic content in some samples. The ginger, black pepper, and tsimeni spices exhibited moderate total phenolic content More experimental data should be gathered to gain a better understanding of the antioxidant activity of spices used in Greek cooking.

Paraskevi Mitlianga has completed her PhD in Biological Chemistry from University of Ioannina Medical School and postdoctoral studies from MDA Anderson University of Texas Medical School at Houston. She now is a full professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Department of Chemical Enginnering, University of Western Macedonia, Greece.

Medicinal, aromatic plants and herbs are known from ancient times to be of important nutritional and healing value. One of the most known and abundant aromatic plant, indigenous in Greek peninsula is lavender (Lavandula angustifolia). Lavender is a new, alternative crop cultivate in the region of Western Macedonia, Greece. Many scientific literature data exist on the beneficial effects of lavender essential oil in human health. Nevertheless there are no many research data on the phenolic compounds, the antioxidant capacity and antimicrobial activity of lavender beverages. The aim of our work was to investigate the total phenolic content and the antioxidant capacity of beverages (infusions – decoctions) of three different varieties of lavender (Druzba, Sevtopolis, Lavandin), in order to define which beverage has the highest concentration of total phenolic compounds and the highest antioxidant capacity and thus exhibits the greatest benefit on human consumption. Antimicrobial activity of the extracts against selected microorganisms was also investigated. Total phenolic content in the extracts was determined spectrometrically applying the Folin-Ciocalteu assay. Ιn order to determine the antioxidant capacity of the beverages DPPH, ABTS and FRAP methods were used. In addition, the beverage preparation time was compared to antioxidant activity and total phenolic content, so that the optimum preparation time to be defined, in order to achieve the maximum beneficial antioxidant effect for human consumption. Our data suggest that the Lavandin variety beverages exhibit the higher antioxidant activity from all other varieties studied. Total phenolic content appears also higher in the Lavandin variety of L. Angustifolia. Our results on lavender beverages (infusion and decostion) show a significant antimicrobial activity on microorganisms tested and are in agreement with literature data on antimicrobial activity of lavender essential oils. Further work needs to be done in order to isolate and characterize the biologically significant compounds that are present in lavender beverages.