Acronym NA
Category
Seafood Processing
Title Assessment of quality and safety of Mediterranean seafoods by “omics” sciences Programme National Programme
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source National
Coordinator institution
Sapienza - Sapienza University of Rome (Italy)
Institutions involved
UNIBA - University of Bari Aldo Moro (Italy) ,
UNIME - University of Messina (Italy) ,
UNIPR - University of Parma (Italy) ,
Start year 2014 End year 2017 Funding (€) € NA Website NA Summary Human nutrition science has greatly developed in the past decades, turning from the consideration of food as simply energy sources to the recognition of its role in maintaining health and reducing the risk of diseases.
Fish and other seafoods represent one of the main human nutritional sources and their consumption is increasing due to the positive benefits for human health related to the high content of nutrients and polyunsaturated ω-3 fatty acids.
Mariculture is a kind of intensive breeding that is gaining popularity, being much profitable than ground breeding. Fish nutrition is of utmost importance in intensive breeding, because feed choice is able to affect both the chemical and physical composition of the product. Besides, during catching, fish species can be affected by alterations in the composition that influence their sensorial properties and quality.
The sea waters around the Archipelago of Aeolian Islands, the Strait of Messina, and Ganzirri Lakes (two salty lakes connected with the sea, Messina) represent an extraordinary reserve of biodiversity within the Mediterranean Basin, and are characterized by peculiarities that make them unique. The project aims to investigate both wild and captive fish species of this area, chosen between the most important for the local economy. The species selected are the European seabass (Dicentrarchus labrax) and the gilthead seabream (<i>Sparus aurata</i>) from the Archipelago of Aeolian Island and the Strait of Messina. Mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) and tellinas (Donax trunculus) farmed in Ganzirri Lakes will complement the panorama of the investigated species.
The project, through the cooperation with local firms exerting intensive breeding, is aimed at characterizing and comparing the meat proteome and lipidome of wild and captive fish species, this knowledge representing an added value of great relevance to improve product quality. For mussels and tellinas, the same study on proteome and lipidome will be aimed to the comparison of different farming times. To ensure also seafood safety and consumer protection, a part of the project will deal with a screening of lipophilic and hydrophilic marine biotoxins in bivalve mollusks. Accumulation of these compounds in seafood causes remarkable economic losses in the shellfish industry sector and poses a risk to human health.
The revolution of the new foodomics science has introduced comprehensive high-throughput approaches for the exploitation of food science in the light of an improvement of human nutrition. Food proteomics and metabolomics, along with their derived omic branches such as peptidomics and lipidomics, are still evolving technologies capable of tackling the huge problem of food quality and safety. Development and application of advanced omics methodologies will contribute to investigate topics considered unapproachable few years ago.
The large complexity of both proteome and lipidome requires the development of highly sensitive and selective analytical advanced technologies, such as high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) in combination with multi-dimensional liquid phase-based separation techniques. In this project ”omics” methods are combined with advanced electron microscopy-based methods to establish a solid platform for elucidating the quality of wild and farmed seafood species. In fact, fish meat quality depends also on texture, appearance and compositional content, which are associated with a number of morphological properties of the product. The fish meat ultrastructure analysis will be carried out by environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM), which allows the rapid investigation of physical properties of untreated samples to be correlated with fish proteome and lipidome.
Omics strategies will be also developed to explore food safety issues concerning marine toxins in mussels. The development of MS-based techniques and the application of foodomics technologies have a very significant impact on this field, and improve even further the limits demanded by food safety legislation. The replacement of current official methods, based on the use of laboratory animals, is auspicial not only for ethical reasons, but also for the advantage to keep under control the toxin profile of shellfish samples during harvesting periods.
The main reason of the project is to promote a multidisciplinary environment where specialists in omics sciences are invited to contribute to the holistic definition of seafoods and to trace a possible way to exploit this view in the nutrition field. These differential studies could be also useful in suggesting changes of farming diets, in order to obtain fish meats as similar as possible to wild fish meats.
The proposal is presented by a consortium composed by research groups having expertise in the development of analytical strategies for food quality and safety assessment.
Keywords
Mussel;
Mollusc;
Food quality;
Seafood;
Bivalve;
Shellfish;
Human health;
Seabream;
Seabass;
Fish;
Marine Region
48
South Tyrrhenian Sea (GSA 10)
60
Western Ionian Sea (GSA 19)
2
Marine Region Map
