Can bees help us find new antibiotics?

Antibiotics are very important for treating bacterial infections in humans, pets, and livestock. However, improper use of antibiotics has resulted in antibiotic resistance, making it difficult to treat some infections. There is an urgent need to discover new antibiotics, but how do we find them? The answer potentially lies with bees and the honey they produce. Bees who feed on unique plants produce honey with high levels of antibiotic activity, due to the presence of antibacterial compounds in the nectar that the bees collect to make honey. In addition to nectar, the bees also collect pollen, which contains a sample of each visited plant’s unique DNA. By studying this DNA, we have identified plants that are sources of the antibacterial compounds found in honey. We are now working to develop new antibiotics from this honey, and we have installed beehives on university buildings to create our own super honey

Oil palm in the 2020s and beyond: challenges and solutions

Oil palm, Elaeis guineensis, is by far the most important global oil crop, supplying about 40\\% of all traded vegetable oil. Palm oils are key dietary components consumed daily by over three billion people, mostly in Asia, and also have a wide range of important non-food uses including in cleansing and sanitizing products.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Monitoring the traceability, safety and authenticity of imported palm oils in Europe

This article describes the challenges of regulating and monitoring traceability and certification systems, and of ensuring the safety and authenticity of foodstuffs imported into Europe, particularly focusing on palm oils. Several measures have been implemented within palm oil supply chains to ensure that traceability can be monitored. However, these supply chains can be highly complex and, more often than not, full traceability is not achievable for stakeholders who only have access to existing systems. In Europe, measures for authenticity of palm oils are not presently as robust as those for other vegetable oils, which means that sometimes unsafe and inauthentic palm oils, often already incorporated into other products, can make their way onto supermarket shelves for unsuspecting consumers. Such instances are usually rare and are normally detected before products are purchased by consumers. Nevertheless, it is still the case that the addition of illegal and potentially harmful additives to palm oils destined for export to Europe is a regular occurrence, alerts for which can be found on the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) portal. As the European Union has committed to only accept authenticated “sustainably sourced” palm oils, it is even more important to ensure that such imported oils are really from the declared source, preferably via proven analytical methods. This makes it more important that accurate and robust techniques are developed and implemented for verifying the provenance and authenticity of palm oils and their downstream products. Here, we review the underlying regulatory framework relating to traceability and authentication and assess some new and emerging chemically-based technologies that should contribute to improving the monitoring of palm oil and other vegetable oil supply chains in Europe and elsewhere

Monitoring the traceability, safety and authenticity of imported palm oils in Europe

This article describes the challenges of regulating and monitoring traceability and certification systems, and of ensuring the safety and authenticity of foodstuffs imported into Europe, particularly focusing on palm oils. Several measures have been implemented within palm oil supply chains to ensure that traceability can be monitored. However, these supply chains can be highly complex and, more often than not, full traceability is not achievable for stakeholders who only have access to existing systems. In Europe, measures for authenticity of palm oils are not presently as robust as those for other vegetable oils, which means that sometimes unsafe and inauthentic palm oils, often already incorporated into other products, can make their way onto supermarket shelves for unsuspecting consumers. Such instances are usually rare and are normally detected before products are purchased by consumers. Nevertheless, it is still the case that the addition of illegal and potentially harmful additives to palm oils destined for export to Europe is a regular occurrence, alerts for which can be found on the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) portal. As the European Union has committed to only accept authenticated “sustainably sourced” palm oils, it is even more important to ensure that such imported oils are really from the declared source, preferably via proven analytical methods. This makes it more important that accurate and robust techniques are developed and implemented for verifying the provenance and authenticity of palm oils and their downstream products. Here, we review the underlying regulatory framework relating to traceability and authentication and assess some new and emerging chemically-based technologies that should contribute to improving the monitoring of palm oil and other vegetable oil supply chains in Europe and elsewhere

Determining the Geographical Origin of Crude Palm Oil with the Combined Use of GC-IMS Fingerprinting and Chemometrics

Current administrative controls used to verify geographical provenance within palm oil supply chains require enhancement and strengthening by more robust analytical methods. In this study, the application of volatile organic compound fingerprinting, in combination with five different analytical classification models, has been used to verify the regional geographical provenance of crude palm oil samples. For this purpose, 108 crude palm oil samples were collected from two regions within Malaysia, namely Peninsular Malaysia (32) and Sabah (76). Samples were analysed by gas chromatography-ion mobility spectrometry (GC-IMS) and the five predictive models (Sparse Logistic Regression, Random Forests, Gaussian Processes, Support Vector Machines, and Artificial Neural Networks) were built and applied. Models were validated using 10-fold cross-validation. The Area Under Curve (AUC) measure was used as a summary indicator of the performance of each classifier. All models performed well (AUC 0.96) with the Sparse Logistic Regression model giving best performance (AUC = 0.98). This demonstrates that the verification of the geographical origin of crude palm oil is feasible by volatile organic compound fingerprinting, using GC-IMS supported by chemometric analysis. </p

Use of headspace–gas chromatography–ion mobility spectrometry to detect volatile fingerprints of palm fibre oil and sludge palm oil in samples of crude palm oil

Abstract Objective The addition of residual oils such as palm fibre oil (PFO) and sludge palm oil (SPO) to crude palm oil (CPO) can be problematic within supply chains. PFO is thought to aggravate the accumulation of monochloropropanediols (MCPDs) in CPO, whilst SPO is an acidic by-product of CPO milling and is not fit for human consumption. Traditional targeted techniques to detect such additives are costly, time-consuming and require highly trained operators. Therefore, we seek to assess the use of gas chromatography–ion mobility spectrometry (GC–IMS) for rapid, cost-effective screening of CPO for the presence of characteristic PFO and SPO volatile organic compound (VOC) fingerprints. Results Lab-pressed CPO and commercial dispatch tank (DT) CPO were spiked with PFO and SPO, respectively. Both additives were detectable at concentrations of 1% and 10% (w/w) in spiked lab-pressed CPO, via seven PFO-associated VOCs and 21 SPO-associated VOCs. DT controls could not be distinguished from PFO-spiked DT CPO, suggesting these samples may have already contained low levels of PFO. DT controls were free of SPO. SPO was detected in all SPO-spiked dispatch tank samples by all 21 of the previously distinguished VOCs and had a significant fingerprint consisting of four spectral regions