Colture e alimenti tradizionali: documentazione, caratterizzazione analitica e ritenzione di composti bioattivi

In recent years the interest of consumers and manufacturers on traditional foods and biodiversity has been constantly growing. The definition of traditional foods has been scientifically elaborated with different approaches, mainly based on a top-down approach. During BaSeFood, a 3 year research programme, investigations were carried out in Black sea area countries, Italy and Portugal, following a scheme of qualitative cross-cultural, on-site surveys of traditional foods and plant raw materials; the information collected has been the basis for both an extensive documentation and the selection and sampling of material to be entered in the experimental phase. A similar scheme was followed in an area of Northern Tuscany (Italy), focussing on local species and critical points in food preparation. The experimental part, was aimed at: a) evaluating the variability of local populations of the selected crops, with respect to key phytochemical compounds content; b) analyze the retention of phytochemicals following cooking/processing. Primitive wheats, mainly represented by Triticum monococcum and Triticum dicoccum, and leafy vegetables of Brassicaceae and Asteraceae families were locally collected as target species. The fate of primitive wheats phytochemicals was monitored during traditional processing of glume removal and kernel crushing, in comparison with a modern plant: besides the efficiency of the process, no relevant differences were found in bioactive compounds retention. In Brassica, retention of main phytochemical compounds was evaluated following the most common cooking methods (boiling, steaming and stir frying), also applying kinetic modelling. Retention was mainly affected by cooking method and duration, plant matrix (extractability) and the chemical nature of individual compounds. Finally, glucosinolate thermal degradation was analyzed in different binary model systems, containing broccoli, to assess the effect of added ingredients during thermal treatment. Added ingredients could play an important role on retention, however further studies are still necessary to better understand which mechanisms are involved.