Impact of the malaxation temperature on the phenolic profile of cv. Cobrançosa olive oils and assessment of the related health claim

Phenolic compounds contribute to the bioactive properties of olive oil. However, olive oils can only support a health claim concerning the protection against oxidative stress depending on the polyphenolic concentration, requiring effective measures during extraction to preserve/enhance their concentrations. The effect of the malaxation temperature (22, 28 and 34 °C) on the phenolic profile was studied for industrially extracted cv. Cobrançosa oils. Higher malaxation temperatures decreased the contents of the majority of the chromatographically detected compounds (P<0.05, one-way ANOVA), enabling oils differentiation. This decreasing trend was observed for hydroxytyrosol and tyrosol bound forms, determinant for the health claim, which were also negatively affected by temperature, despite revealing that all the industrially extracted oils tested supported the health claim. The observed constant free to bound forms ratio showed that the temperature range tested had a minor effect on bound-forms hydrolysis, being both free and bound forms equally affected by temperature.The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science andTechnology (FCT, Portugal) forfinancial support by national fundsFCT/MCTES to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020), to CEB (UIDB/04469/2020), to REQUIMTE-LAQV (UIDB/50006/2020) and to BioTecNorteoperation (NORTE‐01‐0145‐FEDER‐000004) funded by the EuropeanRegional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020‐Programa Operacional Regional do Norte. Ítala Marx acknowledges the Ph.D.research grant (SFRH/BD/137283/2018) provided by FCT. NunoRodrigues thanks the National funding by FCT- Foundation for Scienceand Technology, P.I., through the institutional scientific employment program-contract.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Lead-free piezoceramics - Where to move on?

Lead-free piezoceramics aiming at replacing the market-dominant lead-based ones have been extensively searched for more than a decade worldwide. Some noteworthy outcomes such as the advent of commercial products for certain applications have been reported, but the goal, i.e., the invention of a lead-free piezocermic, the performance of which is equivalent or even superior to that of PZT-based piezoceramics, does not seem to be fulfilled yet. Nevertheless, the academic effort already seems to be culminated, waiting for a guideline to a future research direction. We believe that a driving force for a restoration of this research field needs to be found elsewhere, for example, intimate collaborations with related industries. For this to be effectively realized, it would be helpful for academic side to understand the interests and demands of the industry side as well as to provide the industry with new scientific insights that would eventually lead to new applications. Therefore, this review covers some of the issues that are to be studied further and deeper, so-to-speak, lessons from the history of piezoceramics, and some technical issues that could be useful in better understanding the industry demands. As well, the efforts made in the industry side will be briefly introduced for the academic people to catch up with the recent trends and to be guided for setting up their future research direction effectively.ope

Occurrence & Risk of OTA in Food and Feed

Ochratoxin A (OTA) is a ubiquitous mycotoxin produced mainly by fungal species of the genera Aspergillus and Penicillium, detected worldwide in various food and feed sources and represents a potential human health hazard. OTA is nephrotoxic and is suspected of being the main etiological agent responsible for human Balkan endemic nephropathy (BEN) and associated urinary tract tumours. International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified OTA as a possible human carcinogen (group 2B). The mycotoxin ochratoxin A (OTA) is the most important and most common member among several structurally related ochratoxins. It is a secondary metabolite produced mainly by the following three fungal species Aspergillus alutaceus (formerly known as A. ochraceus), A. carbonarius, and Penicillium verrucosum (EFSA, 2006). Cereals and cereal by-products constitute a major part of the daily diet of the human and animal populations. The total annual yields of cereals globally add up to more than 2000 million tons. Because they are easy to package and transport, they are used for producing a large variety of highly desirable foods, beverages and feed. However, an investigation on a worldwide scale showed that 25% to 40% of cereals are contaminated by mycotoxins (El Khoury and Atoui, 2010). Due to high stability, mycotoxins represent an important problem not only during cereal grain production in field, but also in storage, transport, processing and post-processing steps. This contamination can occur in several times, in the field and/or during storage. It is especially in the countries with hot and wet climatic conditions (in particular African countries, South Asia and South America) that the growth of toxigenic filamentous fungi is most favoured. Thus, rice, corn, and millet, the basic foods of the populations of these countries, are often contaminated by ochratoxins (Nguyen et al., 2007)