Strengthening of the Italian Research Infrastructure for Metrology and Open Access Data in support to the Agrifood
UNINA1 - Authenticity, Traceability and Nutritional Quality of Agrifood
(Reference person: Paola Adamo)
The OU possesses facilities and expertise to assess the authenticity, traceability and nutritional quality of the agrifood products. The Authenticity and Traceability laboratory is specialised in applying a fingerprinting strategy based on spectroscopy (NIR and MIR), geochemical (multielement and isotopic signatures) and metabolomic (NMR) analysis combined with chemometric data treatments to predict quality properties and for authentication of high-quality (PDO, PGI) agrifood products according to their geographical area of origin. The Food, Nutrition and Health laboratory is specialised in the assessment of the nutritional quality and functionality of the agrifood products and side streams to improve also processing sustainability through food innovation. Metabolomics is applied using high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC/HRMS, LC/MS/MS, GC/MS), liquid and gas-chromatography (HPLC/DAD, GC/FID), luminex technology (BioPlex200). The laboratory of microbial ecology provides the expertise in food microbial ecology through the application of novel metagenomics-based techniques. The laboratory is equipped for traditional and molecular microbiology analyses, including a Hamilton StarLet Plus robotic station for the preparation of metagenomic libraries. The team is member of the Task Force on Microbiome Studies (www.tfm.unina.it) at UNINA, collecting expertise and facilities of >150 UNINA scientists working on the microbiome field.
NIR spectroscopy for rapid food analysis
Inductively Coupled Plasma spectrometer (ICP) interfaced with Mass Spectrometer (MS)
HPLC-HRMS for metabolomics of food samples
Hamilton StarLet robotic station for the preparation of genomic and metagenomics libraries for high-throughput sequencing
Paola Adamo
Is a Full Professor of Agricultural Chemistry at the Department of Agricultural Sciences of the Naples University Federico II. Her main research topics are: (i) Authenticity and traceability of high quality agro-products; (ii) Monitoring and mitigation of soils and sediments pollution; (iii) Soil-plant interactions and effects on nutrient biogeochemical cycling. President-Elect (2019-2020) and Past-President (2021-2022) of the Italian Society of Soil Science. She is involved with various roles in several research projects, among which METROFOOD-IT financed by PNRR-MUR, SUREFISH by PRIMA-EU (https://surefish.eu), ReBUS by Italian Space Agency (https://www.facebook.com/rebus.asi.it/) and TOMATO TRACE by Campania Region (https://www.tomatotrace.it/). Peer-reviewed publications (ISI-JCR) with Impact Factor [134]. H-index: 42; Citations: 4982 (Scopus November 2022).
Francesca De Filippis
Is Associate Professor of Food Microbiology at the Department of Agricultural Sciences of the University of Naples Federico II. Her research interests span from food microbiology to the inter-connections among diet-human microbiome-health. She is expert in the study of microbial ecology in complex environments through the application of metagenomics and genomics tools. She participates as PI or team member into several National and European projects, and she was included in the list published by the Univ. of Stanford including the top 2% world scientists across all fields of the year 2019,20,21. She is member of the Managing Board of the Task Force on Microbiome Studies of the University of Naples Federico II (www.tfm.unina.it). Peer-reviewed international publications: 92; H-index: 41; total citations: >5,100 (Scopus, Nov. 2022).
Raffaela Ofano
Is a Ph.D. student in Food Science (XXXVIII cycle) at Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Naples Federico II. In 2022 she obtained her master’s degree in “Geology and applied geology” at University of Naples Federico II. Her Ph.D. research project, financed by METROFOOD-IT project and University of Naples Federico II, aims at the development, testing and validation of an integrated approach for the traceability of geographical origin and the authentication of quality agri-food products such as “Pomodorino del piennolo del Vesuvio DOP”. The analytical approach is mainly based on spectroscopic, multi-elementary, isotopic, metabolomic and microbiological analyses of food products to promote their organoleptic qualities and nutritional components, in order to enhance their typicality, and to implement traceability systems, evaluating their geographic origin.
Paola Vitaglione
Is Associate Professor of Human Nutrition at University of Naples “Federico II“, Department of Agricultural Sciences where she is the coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Course in Food Innovation and Product Design (FIPDes, www.fipdes.eu), member of the PhD boarding school of Food science and head of the Food & Health Lab. The main research goal of her research team is to design and develop healthy and sustainable foods and validate their efficacy in vitro and in vivo in humans by applying metabolomics to characterize food and biological samples. Results of the research led to 226 peer-reviewed publications in international journals (h-index 47, 8584 citations, WOS Nov 2022) and her inclusion in the prestigious list of “Highly cited researchers” in the years 2016 and 2017. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6608-5209