Chestnut Cultivar Identification through the Data Fusion of Sensory Quality and FT-NIR Spectral Data.

The world production of chestnuts has significantly grown in recent decades. Consumer attitudes, increasingly turned towards healthy foods, show a greater interest in chestnuts due to their health benefits. Consequently, it is important to develop reliable methods for the selection of high-quality products, both from a qualitative and sensory point of view.

The health-nutrition dimension: a methodological approach to assess the nutritional sustainability of typical agro-food products and the Mediterranean diet.

Background: The aim of this paper is to provide a methodological approach to evaluate the nutritional sustainability of typical agro-food products, representing Mediterranean eating habits and included in the Mediterranean food pyramid.

Results: For each group of foods, suitable and easily measurable indicators were identified. Two macro-indicators were used to assess the nutritional sustainability of each product.

Investigating the origin of tomatoes and triple concentrated tomato pastes through multielement determination by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and statistical analysis.

The concentration of 32 elements (Al, As, Ba, Be, Ca, Cd, Ce, Cu, Dy, Fe, K, La, Lu, Mg, Mn, Na, Nd, Pb, Rb, Sm, Sr, Th, U, V, Zn) was determined in tomatoes harvested in different four Italian regions and in triple concentrated tomato paste samples coming from Italy, China, Greece and California. The resulting multielement profiles were processed using three chemometric techniques to evaluate the possibility of discrimination between different cultivation areas. The closed-vessel microwave digested samples were diluted and analyzed by DRC-ICP-MS with CH(4) as reaction gas.