Marçal Plans

Using Trendsetting Chefs to Design New Culinary Preparations with the “Penjar” Tomato

New food products are normally marketed after research regarding consumers’ preferences. As an alternative, we used trendsetting chefs to develop and evaluate products with the traditional, long shelf life, “Penjar” tomato (alc gene). The most appreciated creations were Catalan bread with tomato, tomato sauce, and tomato jam, excelling by its flavor complexity and balance. The description of the products by a trained panel revealed significant differences between varieties (especially between the food products elaborated with the “Penjar” type and conventional tomatoes). However, it was not easy to match the chefs’ assessments about sensory properties with the panel descriptions.

Sensory changes related to breeding for plant architecture and resistance to viruses and anthracnose in bean market class Fabada (Phaseolus vulgaris L.)

Consumers hold landraces in high esteem and often consider that breeding programs lead to a loss of sensory quality, although consumers’ opinions have not been scientifically confirmed. As a model case of study we recorded seed sensory traits in six inbred common bean lines classified in the market class Fabada obtained by backcrossing and/or pedigree selection (to change the plant architecture and increase resistances) and then cultivated in two environments in two consecutive years. A sensory panel noted differences among all the inbreds, but only the introduction of the gene fin (determinate growth habit) seemed to be associated to a loss of quality (rougher seed coat and lower percentage of whole beans after cooking). As theoretically expected, changes in sensory traits were smaller in inbreds obtained through simple backcrossing than in those obtained through pedigree selection after inbred crossing. Large differences in sensory traits due to environmental factors were also recorded (similar to the genetic effects in magnitude), especially soil type and rainfall around flowering. These results make it highly recommendable to evaluate sensory attributes in the course of breeding programs to ensure that the sensory quality is not lost. Given the importance of the environmental component in the phenotypic variation of the sensory traits studied, crop location and management also appear as key factors for the obtainment of optimum products.

Application of infrared microspectroscopy and chemometric analysis for screening the acrylamide content in potato chips

Currently, LC-MS/MS and GC-MS are the most common techniques used for acrylamide analysis in foods. However, these techniques require extensive sample preparation, highly specialized machinery, and are time consuming. Our objective was to evaluate the feasibility of using attenuated total reflectance (ATR) mid-infrared microspectroscopy (IRMS) as a rapid method for detection and quantification of acrylamide in potato chips. The acrylamide content of 58 commercially available potato chips (110–1876 μg kg−1) was determined by LC-MS/MS. Spectra for aqueous extracts of potato chips with and without solid phase extraction (SPE) clean-up were collected using ATR-IRMS. Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) was applied to generate calibration models to predict acrylamide levels. Samples were grouped into three categories: regular potato chips (n = 46), potato chips with seasonings (n = 12) and combination of regular and seasoned potato chips (n = 58). Overall, a good linear correlation was found between the predicted acrylamide levels of independent sample sets and actual measured acrylamide concentrations by LC-MS/MS (rPred was between 0.91 and 0.92). Standard error of prediction (SEP) for the models ranged between 22.1 and 28.9 μg L−1. Models developed without SPE cleaning provided similar or better results than those with SPE treatment, which makes IRMS technology even more promising for acrylamide analysis since the SPE step can be avoided. Our results indicate that IRMS can be used as a simple, rapid and high-throughput screening tool for acrylamide detection and quantification in potato chips and help addressing risk management, assessing safety and brand equity.