Current Research in Food Safety and Biotechnology

Biotechnology is a field at the interface of biology and industry, being part of the applied sciences field. The term biotechnology encompasses quite a large field and includes the processing of raw materials with the obtainment of food products via enzymatic processes or with the help of microorganisms. Different food products, such as milk, beer, alcohol, starch, meat, fruit juices, sugar, bakery products, etc., may be obtained using different enzymatic processes or with the help of microorganisms. This Special Issue of the 8th International Conference of Biotechnologies, Present and Perspectives, organized by Ştefan cel Mare University, Faculty of Food Engineering, Suceava, Romania, presents the latest developments in the food industry field, with a focus on the biotechnological processes that take place in various branches of the food industry, which have major implications in determining the overall quality of food products.

Today, the role of the food industry is to process different raw materials of vegetable or animal provenience or by-products at a higher level and to increase their value through processing. The food industry ensures not only the preservation of raw materials but also increases the nutritional value of food products. The development of biotechnologies has led to the production of food products for which their maximum nutritional values can be ensured. The current orientation of the food industry is focused on minimum food processing, which implies simplified, economical processing that results in maintaining a nutritional value of food products that is as high as possible. The article written by Ghinea et al. [1] underlined the possibility of obtaining apple chips from three different low-cost apple cultivars through a drying process with good physico-chemical and sensory characteristics. This will lead to the possibility of their preservation and consumption for a long period of time. Taking into account the fact that apple fruits present high nutritional value, being rich in phenolic compounds, dietary fibers, vitamins, etc., their transformation in value-added products such as apple chips may help us to obtain health benefits from their consumption. The possibility of using a heating treatment in order to improve the nutritional value of two sorghum varieties (red and white) with different particle sizes was reported by Batariuc et al. [2]. According to them, a dry heat treatment applied to sorghum flour will improve its nutrition value, which may be helpful for food producers who want to use sorghum flour as a raw material at the industrial level. The application of a minimum food processing procedure with low costs may lead to improvements in the nutritional value of various raw materials which may be used to obtain different food products. According to Coțovanu and Mironeasa [3], the use of different particle sizes of amaranth flour obtained through milling and sieving may lead to different nutritional values of amaranth flour. This may be an important criterion when obtaining food products with amaranth addition with high nutritional values. From the technological perspective, the addition of amaranth with different particle sizes in bread making leads to optimal results; a 9.41% addition level of amaranth enables large changes to nutritional values, a level of 9.39% enables medium changes, and a level of 7.89% enables small changes. Due to amaranth’s high nutritional value, amaranth seed compounds have been intensively studied in recent decades. In our Special Issue, amaranth seeds were also studied by Procopet and Oroian [4], who concluded that they are a valuable source of fatty acids, from which 16.54% were saturated acids and 83.45% were unsaturated acids. Additionally, amaranth seeds are rich in essential amino acids such as isoleucine, histidine, leucine, methionine, lysine, phenylalanine, tryptophan, threonine, and valine and polyphenols such as vanillic acid, rosmarinic acid, chlorogenic acid, p-coumaric acid, and caffeic acid.

The increases in the nutritional value of the food products obtained using different biotechnological processes through the addition of active components had been intensively studied in recent years. In this Special Issue, the effects of the use of hemp seed oil on dough and bread quality were analyzed by Ropciuc et al. [5]. Hemp seed oil contains high amounts of essential fatty acids and is a valuable ingredient due to its omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acid ratio of 3:1. It is used in bread making, and a 5–10% addition in wheat flour will lead to good bread quality from the textural and sensorial perspectives. Another improvement by using an ingredient that may increase the nutritional value of food products in which the main raw material is wheat flour, such as pasta, was reported by Ungureanu-Iuga and Mironeasa [6]. According to them, the use of grape peels, which are rich in polyphenols and fibers, in levels of up to 5% in wheat flour will lead to improvements in quality characteristics from the technological and nutritional perspectives. As an ingredient in bakery products, the analysis of nine samples of margarine was also carried out due to its nutritional and technological characteristics. The data reported by Păduret [7] showed that bakery margarine is a plastic material with a high fracturability, and from the nutritional perspective, palmitic acid is the dominant fatty acid within it.

The use of fibers (psyllium and pectin) and plant-based milks from almonds and hemps in order to obtain vegetable milk ice cream with no additive additions was discussed in this Special Issue by Leahu et al. [8]. They concluded that it is possible to obtain a vegetable ice cream with high nutritional value as an alternative to milk-based ice cream, which may be marketed to consumers who follow a plant-based diet or have an intolerance to milk products.

Trans-resveratrol accumulation in pruned vine shoots was also investigated by Crăciun and Gutt [9] in order to obtain this supplement for pharmacological and medical purposes. Additionally, increased amounts of macronutrients and micronutrients in different herbal raw materials such as summer savory, marjoram, and lemon balm through the use of biostimulants were reported in this Special Issue by Majkowska-Gadomska et al. [10].

Food safety is the most important criteria that food must meet. Food products must be useful to the human body and must not become a source of life-threatening illness. The consumption of crops contaminated with a certain level of mycotoxins that has been established by European Union legislation as harmful can lead to toxic effects. An overview analysis of the presence of mycotoxins such as deoxynivalenol, fumonisins, and zearalenone in maize and maize-derived products from eastern Romania was presented by Mihalcea and Amariei [11]. According to their study, the mycotoxins analyzed were within legal limits in the products they examined, which indicates that these products are safe for food production. Additionally, another aspect of food safety that was discussed in this Special Issue concerned water quality in bottled drinking water for babies. For this purpose, Ungureanu et al. [12] used 19 samples of bottled baby water to analyze 12 potentially toxic elements (Ba, Cu, Co, Zn, Ni, Mn, Li, Fe, Cd, Pb, Cr, and Sb) using ICP-MS. According to the data obtained, the levels of all of the elements analyzed, except iron, adhered to the legislation in force. Therefore, all of the samples analyzed can be safely consumed by children and babies.

The works published in this Special Issue presented various aspects of research relating to the main current trends regarding the obtainment of safe food with high preservation and nutritional values by improving the biotechnologies applied in the food industry. Thus, based on their own research and data from the literature, the authors presented food safety aspects and different issues regarding the use or obtainment of raw materials that lead to the creation of products with high nutritional value. Biotechnological aspects of obtaining food products such as bakery products, pasta, and ice cream were also described.

By presenting this complex theme and high-level approaches, the works from this Special Issue of the 8th International Conference of Biotechnologies, Present and Perspectives organized by Ştefan cel Mare University, Faculty of Food Engineering, Suceava, Romania, will be of use to those interested in the future trends regarding biotechnologies in the food industry, applied engineering sciences, food product quality, food safety, environment protection, and equipment in the food industry.