Indoor medicinal plants and advanced IV range products. These are some of the events on the first day of Macfrut, the international fair for the fresh produce supply chain that opened its doors yesterday in Rimini to a full house and will continue until Friday 10 May with a packed programme.
“Shedding light” on medicinal plants: experience in indoor cultivation and pharmaceutical applications.
Vertical farming : the importance of multidisciplinary collaborations, crucial in the academic world, crosses innovative agronomic practices for the benefit of health and quality of life. Without forgetting the need for almost continuous research, as pointed out by Andrea Primavera, president of Fippo (Italian Federation of Official Plant Producers). The conference "Let's shed some light on medicinal plants: experience of indoor cultivation and applications in the pharmaceutical field" was held around these concepts, within the framework of the Spices&Herbs Global Expo , dedicated to official plants, herbs and spices.
Promoted by the Department of Agri-Food Science and Technology of the University of Bologna, the event brought together the world of university research and its young professors with the business world in direct application in protected fields, and concluded the conference with a guided visit to real small farms, suitable for the creation of family gardens. The event focused precisely on this field of application in relation to the results obtained by research into the possibility of increasing yields through ad hoc cultivation systems using bioengineering, such as the case of light recipes specific to each crop (carried out, for example, on Madagascar Periwinkle, Coleus and Taus Baccata).
Fresh-cut and evolved fresh-cut products: technological strategies for process/product innovation.
At the fair's first one-day event Innovation Hub for Healthy Food , freshly cut products were examined. Fresh-cut products are made up of fruit and vegetables and, in general, fresh vegetables, packaged and ready to eat. Of every 100 people who buy in this category, more than half do not like any particular brand. Some are more recognizable, but for the majority there is no knowledge of the brands. This scenario is also influenced by the high market share of white brands, which exceeds 50 percent in supermarkets and hypermarkets and 70 percent in discount stores. According to data from the conference “Fresh-cut and evolved fresh-cut: technological strategies for product innovation”, of every 100 people who go through the fruit and vegetable department, only nine stop at the fresh-cut refrigerators to make a purchase.
“Faced with this loss of ground,” says Giancarlo Colelli of DAFNE University in Foggia, “a major communication effort is needed based on some of the product’s advantages, such as, for example, the sustainability of the packaging or the freshness of the product. But research has made great strides, reaching, for example, the point of establishing, using spectrometric images, the quality level of vegetables or fruit with the greatest precision, both in terms of freshness and in terms of nutritional value.”
It is currently difficult for struggling companies to invest in both communication and research, although there are large publicly funded projects underway involving public partners, such as research institutions, or private ones.
Product quality, unconventional packaging with controlled atmosphere, increasingly rapid detection of the presence of possible pathogens, introduction of new vegetables into the IV range processing chain, heat treatments to increase the nutritional and organoleptic quality as well as the safety of salads, or, again, using nanoencapsulated natural ingredients to reduce the microbial load in freshly harvested material.
Events of the second day, May 9.
Today, Thursday 9 May, kicks off with the World Table Grape Symposium, which highlights market trends and production trends by involving the world's leading buyers in the actor Macfrut Table Grape Global.
The Spices&Herbs Global Expo begins with the 11th Fippo Forum, the international forum that attracts official plant producers from around the world.
It also starts the International Congress of Biosolutions about “What biosolutions for high-quality cherries”?
As for international events, “Initiatives and tools for the development of international partnerships in the horticultural and agro-industrial sector: focus on Africa” and “Presentation of the Agricultural Transformation Programme. An opportunity to strengthen the beneficial partnership between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Italy”.
For more information
Elena Vincenzi and Michela Dongi
Macfrut international press office c/o fruitecom srl
Mobile: +39 340 5588 732; +39 348 4074 079
