Ricerc@Sapienza

“Plant milks” are water-based beverages, such as, extracts from cereals, pseudo-cereals, oil seeds, legumes or fruits. Plant milk consumption is rising in European and North American markets due to problems related to cow milk allergies, intolerances, but also because of vegan diets and sensitivity to environmental issues. There is no specific regulation for these beverages, therefore their composition can vary considerably, even in the same category.

In the recent years, two culvaon techniques have been developed that differ from convenonal agriculture: hydroponic and organic. The hydroponic methods use several substrates like the stone wool or coconut fibers for substute the soil. Organic aim is to reduce the environmental impact (on water, land and air) of agricultural pracces. The aim of the present work is to evaluate the quality parameters of tomatoes coming from convenonal, organic and hydroponic culvaon. The parameters selected was total phenolic compounds, anoxidant capacity and biogenic amines.

A multi-methodological approach was applied to study red sweet peppers (Capsicum annuum L.) ecotype “Cornetto di Pontecorvo” grown in a greenhouse or in open field. This approach includes morphological analysis, chemical composition determination, and biological activity evaluation of different extracts from pepper fruits.

Celery is a widely used vegetable known for its peculiar sensorial and nutritional properties. Here, the white celery (Apium graveolens L.) “sedano bianco di Sperlonga” PGI ecotype was investigated to obtain the metabolic profile of its edible parts (blade leaves and petioles) also related to quality, freshness and biological properties. A multi-methodological approach, including NMR, MS, HPLC-PDA, GC–MS and spectrophotometric analyses, was proposed to analyse celery extracts.