Impact of Visual Cues on Consumers' Freshness Perception of Prepared Vegetables.

Freshness is an important quality attribute for vegetables. Identifying the sensory drivers for freshness is important to promote vegetable consumption. Due to the lack of research on freshness of prepared vegetables, this study focused on the role of visual cues of common vegetables (carrot, beetroot, bell pepper) on perception of freshness.

Improvement of Robusta coffee aroma by modulating flavor precursors in the green coffee bean with enzymatically treated spent coffee grounds: A circular approach.

Spent coffee grounds (SCG) are by-products obtained from the industrial process of instant coffee production or alternatively after brewing of coffee at the point of consumption. This solid residue represents one of the largest waste materials worldwide, making this fraction a rational target for valorization. The composition of SCG varies significantly depending on the brewing and extraction methods.

Unlocking the Aromatic Potential of Native Coffee Yeasts: From Isolation to a Biovolatile Platform.

Postharvest processing of coffee has been shown to impact cup quality. Yeasts are known to modulate the sensory traits of the final cup of coffee after controlled fermentation at the farm. Here, we enumerated native coffee yeasts in a Nicaraguan farm during dry and semidry postharvest processing of Arabica and Robusta beans.

Cereal bran protects vitamin A from degradation during simmering and storage.

Food supplementation with vitamin A is an efficient strategy to combat vitamin A deficiency. The stability of vitamin A during cooking and storage is, however, low. We here show that cereal bran protects retinyl palmitate (RP) during simmering and storage.

Influence of Various Processing Parameters on the Microbial Community Dynamics, Metabolomic Profiles, and Cup Quality During Wet Coffee Processing.

Post-harvest wet coffee processing is a commonly applied method to transform coffee cherries into green coffee beans through depulping or demucilaging, fermentation, washing, soaking, drying, and dehulling. Multiple processing parameters can be modified and thus influence the coffee quality (green coffee beans and cup quality). The present study aimed to explore the impacts of these parameters, including processing type (depulping or demucilaging), fermentation duration, and application of soaking, on the microbial community dynamics, metabolite compositions of processing waters (fermentation and soaking) and coffee beans, and resulting cup quality through a multiphasic approach.

Characterization of a thermoactive endoglucanase isolated from a biogas plant metagenome.

A metagenomic library from DNA isolated from a biogas plant was constructed and screened for thermoactive endoglucanases to gain insight into the enzymatic diversity involved in plant biomass breakdown at elevated temperatures. Two cellulase-encoding genes were identified and the corresponding proteins showed sequence similarities of 59% for Cel5A to a putative cellulase from Anaerolinea thermolimosa and 99% for Cel5B to a characterized endoglucanase isolated from a biogas plant reactor. The cellulase Cel5A consists of one catalytical domain showing sequence similarities to glycoside hydrolase family 5 and comprises 358 amino acids with a predicted molecular mass of 41.

Enrichment of anaerobic heterotrophic thermophiles from four Azorean hot springs revealed different community composition and genera abundances using recalcitrant substrates.

DGGE analysis combined with a metagenomic approach was used to get insights into heterotrophic anoxic enrichment cultures of four hot springs of Vale das Furnas, Portugal, using the recalcitrant substrate spent coffee ground (SCG). Parallel enrichment cultures were performed using the major components of spent coffee ground, namely arabinogalactan, galactomannan, cellulose, and proteins. DGGE revealed that heterotrophic thermophilic bacteria are highly abundant in the hydrothermal springs and significant differences in community composition depending on the substrate were observed.

Following Coffee Production from Cherries to Cup: Microbiological and Metabolomic Analysis of Wet Processing of Coffea arabica.

A cup of coffee is the final product of a complex chain of operations. Wet postharvest processing of coffee is one of these operations, which involves a fermentation that inevitably has to be performed on-farm. During wet coffee processing, the interplay between microbial activities and endogenous bean metabolism results in a specific flavor precursor profile of the green coffee beans.

Vitamin A degradation in triglycerides varying by their saturation levels.

Vitamin A deficiency has a widespread occurrence globally and is considered as one of the world's most serious health risk factors. Potential solutions to address this deficiency include dietary diversification or supplementation, but food fortification is generally accepted as the most cost-effective solution. The main issue with food fortification of this vitamin is related to its high instability in food matrices.

The pseudoenzyme PDX1.2 boosts vitamin B6 biosynthesis under heat and oxidative stress in Arabidopsis.

Vitamin B6 is an indispensable compound for survival, well known as a cofactor for numerous central metabolic enzymes and more recently for playing a role in several stress responses, particularly in association with oxidative stress. Regulatory aspects for the use of the vitamin in these roles are not known. Here we show that certain plants carry a pseudoenzyme (PDX1.

It takes two to tango: defining an essential second active site in pyridoxal 5'-phosphate synthase.

The prevalent de novo biosynthetic pathway of vitamin B6 involves only two enzymes (Pdx1 and Pdx2) that form an ornate multisubunit complex functioning as a glutamine amidotransferase. The synthase subunit, Pdx1, utilizes ribose 5-phosphate and glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate, as well as ammonia derived from the glutaminase activity of Pdx2 to directly form the cofactor vitamer, pyridoxal 5'-phosphate. Given the fact that a single enzyme performs the majority of the chemistry behind this reaction, a complicated mechanism is anticipated.

Lipophilicity determination of highly lipophilic compounds by liquid chromatography.

Different experimental strategies using short columns in both conventional liquid chromatography (HPLC) and ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography (UHPLC) were evaluated to allow, for the first time with these techniques, the lipophilicity determination of compounds with log P>5. Various organic modifiers, stationary phases, and elution modes were tested on 14 rigid compounds with a CLogP between 5 and 8, and 38 compounds with log P(oct) from 0 to 5. The best results in HPLC were obtained with the 20-mm Discovery RP Amide C16 stationary phase in isocratic mode using MeOH as organic modifier.

Intersubunit cross-talk in pyridoxal 5'-phosphate synthase, coordinated by the C terminus of the synthase subunit.

Vitamin B(6) is essential in all organisms, due to its requirement as a cofactor in the form of pyridoxal 5'-phosphate (PLP) for key metabolic enzymes. It can be synthesized de novo by either of two pathways known as deoxyxylulose 5-phosphate (DXP)-dependent and DXP-independent. The DXP-independent pathway is the predominant pathway and is found in most microorganisms and plants.