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S17

INTEGRATIVE APPROACHes to PRODUCT QUALITY IN FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

Conveners
Alyson Mitchell, UC Davis, USA
Professor of Food Chemistry in the Department of Food Science, her research interests focus on the development and application of analytical methods for improved understanding of foods, chemical composition of foods and food ingredients, with the goal of increasing quality, health impact, improving use of by-product streams, and innovating food processing for a more sustainable food supply.
Nadia Bertin, Inrae, France
Senior scientist at Plants & Horticultural Systems unit, Avignon, her research topics are ecophysiology of fruit growth (cell division and expansion processes) and quality (size, composition and texture) and analysis of GxExM interactions. In recent years, she has been more specifically involved in several interdisciplinary projects on tomato adaptation to water deficit and the impact on organoleptic, technological and nutritional quality.
Keynote Speakers
Multi-omics approaches towards the development of healthier fruits and vegetables
Improving crop sustainability and fruit quality through integrated analyses along the food chain
Carotenoid content in mature fruits under soil water deficit: accounting the role of pre-maturing processes though carotenoid kinetics and cell microscopy.
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Isabel Abadias, Spain ; Susanne Baldermann, Germany ; Jessica Cooperstone, USA ; ZhanWu Dai,China ; Anne-Laure Fanciullino, France ; Desta Bekele, Ethiopia ; David Page, France ; Cherubino Leonardi, Italy ; Bart Nicolai, Belgium ; Ingrid Aguilo, Spain ; Nazim Gruda, Germany ; Bhimu Patil, USA

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

The quality of fruits and vegetables is the complex output of growth and metabolic processes, which build in a dynamic way during plant development, organ storage and processing until consumption. Whether consumed fresh or processed, many factors, such as agronomic, genetic or technological are involved and interact during an organ’s life. This symposium will bring together scientists from different disciplines to share their perspectives and approaches for optimizing F&V quality and to present new integrated research linking pre- and post-harvest management and processing with quality. The symposium will cover all dimensions of F&V quality (e.g. nutritional, organoleptic, commercial, safety…etc.,) from field to fork, with the goals of improving the composition of hedonic and health related compounds.

The following topics will be developed during the symposium :

• Genetic diversity, environmental factors and growing practices to optimize the quality of fresh and processed products in the context of global change. This topic will discuss multidisciplinary research on F&V quality created in the field in response to environmental fluctuations and eventual stresses, in particular in low-input production systems. All scales from gene to plant will be considered.
• Increase food use of F&V products based on quality improvement and monitoring throughout the production chain. This topic will cover all advances and innovations in the F&V chain, with links between production, conservation and processing, including phenotyping, fast analysis methods, nondestructive and prediction tools of quality. Quality may include either usual traits (sensory and biochemical parameters, antioxidant activity…) or traits related to the improvement of new functionality for food (viscosity, aromaticity, health benefits, processability…). The objective is to monitor and improve quality all along the production chain.
• Integrated approaches of F&V quality from field to fork. This topic includes both experimental and modelling approaches to understand mechanisms involved at the interface between production and postharvest technologies in order to optimize the end-product quality and to adapt practices all along the production chain. Multi-scales decision making tools will be included; in this perspective, research on non-horticultural species could be accepted as proof-of-concept.