Alessandra Biancolillo

• Analytical Chemistry
• PostDoc Position at University of L'Aquila

While studies on the co-fermentation of fruits and grapes are reported in the literature, blends of wine and fruit wine have never been investigated before. We characterised a blend (80:20 v/v) of Trebbiano Abruzzese white wine, organic kiwifruit wine, and the sparkling beverage obtained by its successive refermentation in a bottle. A persimmon/kiw...

This study primarily focuses on the analysis of volatile organic compounds using GC–MS, with ICP-MS employed as a complementary method to quantify trace metal content. Headspace GC–MS was conducted to detect alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEOs), formaldehyde, aromatic amines derived from azo dyes, perfluorinated carboxylic acids, chlorophenols (PCPs), t...

Background: This study aimed to validate a method for characterizing and quantifying the multi-elemental profiles of different insect flours to enable their distinction, identification, and quality assessment. The focus was on three insect species: cricket (Acheta domesticus), buffalo worm (Alphitobius diaperinus), and mealworm (Tenebrio molitor)....

This study focused on optimizing a cold water extraction method to obtain bioactive compounds from chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla L.), addressing increasing consumer demand for natural products and nutraceuticals. A full-factorial design was employed to evaluate the effects of temperature, time, and chamomile amount on the polyphenolic profile of...

Brassicaceae is a family of vegetables found all over the world that has been attracting the attention of researchers due to its rich chemical composition and potential health benefits (antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, as well as antimutagenic activity and potential anticarcinogenic effects). In Italy, various Brassicaceae varieties are commercia...

Chemometrics, or the application of multivariate statistics to chemical data, provides informative and statistically valid analyses within a forensic context and there has been an increase in the use of chemometrics to characterise forensic exhibits. Introducing chemometric methods suitable for forensic practitioners, this book fills a gap in the l...

Featured Application ATR-FT-IR coupled with chemometrics for the assessment of geographical origin of Italian almonds. Abstract Almonds are the seeds of the almond (Prunus Amygdalus) tree and are a nut consumed worldwide. The present study utilized the ATR FT-IR technique followed by a chemometric analysis to develop predictive models for determin...

Featured Application Multi-platform analysis of donkey milk. Abstract Donkey milk represents an efficient substitute for human milk in infants’ diets being unlikely to cause allergic reactions. In this study, different donkey milks were collected at two lactation times (T0 and T1), subjected to freezing–thawing and freeze-drying, and analyzed by I...

Featured Application Non-destructive characterization and classification of Brassicaceae landraces. Abstract In recent years, Brassicaceae have piqued the interest of researchers due to their extremely rich chemical composition, particularly the abundance of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds, as well as because of their antimutagenic an...

This article contains a comprehensive tutorial on classification by means of Soft Independent Modelling of Class Analogy (SIMCA). Such a tutorial was conceived in an attempt to offer pragmatic guidelines for a sensible and correct utilisation of this tool as well as answers to three basic questions: "why employing SIMCA?", "when employing SIMCA?" a...

An altered amino acid metabolism has been described in frail older adults which may contribute to muscle loss and functional decline associated with frailty. In the present investigation, we compared circulating amino acid profiles of older adults with physical frailty and sarcopenia (PF&S, n = 94), frail/pre-frail older adults with type 2 diabetes...

A comparative quantitative structure–retention relationship (QSRR) study was carried out to predict the retention time of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) using molecular descriptors. The molecular descriptors were generated by the software Dragon and employed to build QSRR models. The effect of chromatographic parameters, such as flow rate,...

The growing world population, combined with scarcities of agricultural land, water, forest, fisheries, and biodiversity resources, makes it necessary to search for alternative sources of nutrients. For this reason, in recent years, edible insects have been introduced into the diet, even in areas where entomophagy is not traditional. In light of thi...

Counterfeit or substandard drugs are pharmaceutical formulations in which the active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) have been replaced or ingredients do not comply with the drug leaflet. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, fraud associated with the preparation of substandard or counterfeit drugs is expected to grow, undermining health sy...

Headspace Solid-Phase Microextraction coupled to Gas-Chromatography with Mass Spectrometry detection (HS-SPME/GC-MS) has been widely used to analyze the composition of wine aroma. This technique was here applied to investigate the volatile profile of Trebbiano d’Abruzzo and Pecorino white wines produced in Abruzzo (Italy). Optimization of SPME cond...

Celery (Apium graveolens L., var. Dulce), is a biennial herbaceous plant belonging to the Apiaceae family, cultivated in humid soils in the Mediterranean basin, in Central-Southern Europe, and in Asia. Despite its wide diffusion and although it is well-known that cultivar/origin strongly influences plant composition, only a few studies have been ca...

In recent years, thanks to their numerous nutritional benefits, legumes have been rediscovered and have attracted interest from many consumers. However, these products, the most valuable ones traditionally produced in smaller communities in particular, can be objects of fraud; this is the case of Italian lentils, which, being a dry product, have a...

Celery (Apium graveolens L.) is a well- known plant and at the basis of the culinary tradition of different populations. In Italy, several celery ecotypes, presenting unique peculiarities, are grown by small local producers, and they need to be characterized, in order to be protected and safeguarded. The present work aims at developing a fast and n...

The development of fast, non-destructive, and green methods with adequate sensitivity for saffron authentication has important implications in the quality control of the entire production chain of this precious spice. In this context, the highly suitable sensitivity of a spectroscopic method coupled with chemometrics was verified. A total number of...

Saffron is a spice obtained from the drying process of the stigmas of the flower Crocus sativus Linnaeus. It is well known that the organoleptic characteristics of this spice are closely linked to the production area and harvesting year. The present work aims to evaluate whether saffron samples produced in different years and origins present sensib...

Donkey milk (DM) is an emerging foodstuff, gaining increasing attention due to its nutritional properties. As a high value-added product, it can be subjected to adulteration with cheaper milks, e.g., cow milk. The present work addresses the possibility of developing a fast and economic method for the authentication of pure DM using Near Infrared (N...

The Italian carrot varieties cultivated in the Fucino upland (Abruzzo), and Ispica (Sicily), both Protected Geographical Indication specialties, together with an ordinary product grown in the Apulia region, were characterized by attenuated total reflectance Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR FT-IR) and headspace solid-phase microextractio...

The fatty acid (FA) profiles of 240 samples of ricotta whey cheese made from sheep, goat, cow, or water buffalo milk were analyzed by gas-chromatography (GC). Then, sequential preprocessing through orthogonalization (SPORT) was used in order to classify samples according to the nature of the milk they were made from. This strategy achieved excellen...

Deep learning (DL) is emerging as a new tool to model spectral data acquired in analytical experiments. Although applications are flourishing, there is also much interest currently observed in the scientific community on the use of DL for spectral data modelling. This paper provides a critical and comprehensive review of the major benefits, and pot...

Reliable analytical methods able to establish wine authenticity and compliance with the origin/variety denomination are essential tools for the safeguarding of consumers from fraud. In this work, we attempted the discrimination of certified monovarietal white wines produced in the Abruzzo region (Central Italy) in 2015 with Trebbiano d’Abruzzo, Pec...

In the present work, a fast, relatively cheap, and green analytical strategy to identify and quantify the fraudulent (or voluntary) addition of a drug (alprazolam, the API of Xanax®) to an alcoholic drink of large consumption, namely gin and tonic, was developed using coupling near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) and chemometrics. The approach used was...

In data analysis, how to select meaningful variables is a hot and wide-debated topic, and several variable selection (or feature reduction) approaches have been proposed in the literature. Although feature selection methods are numerous, most of them are suitable for data matrices, but not for higher order structures. This is mainly due to the fact...

Ground bell pepper is a spice used worldwide. The cultivation area has a significant influence on the chemical composition of this food product; consequently, its origin is closely linked to the organoleptic characteristics. This study is focused on the analysis of the mineral composition of two high-valued Italian ground bell peppers: the Senise P...

Three certified Pecorino cheeses, protected designation of origin (PDO) Pecorino Romano, PDO Pecorino Sardo, and Pecorino di Farindola (Slow Food Presidium specialty), produced in Central Italy were analyzed by attenuated total reflectance-fourier transformed infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy and classified according to their manufacture and/or diff...

Background: The present work represents a feasibility study for the realization of an analytical method finalized to the detection of expired antibiotic tablets. The work focuses on a specific antibiotic drug and represents the preliminary study upstream of a larger-scale work. Methods: attenuated Total reflection-Fourier transform infrared spectro...

Multi-block datasets are widely met in the chemometrics domain, and several data fusion approaches have recently been proposed to treat them. Apart from exploratory and predictive modelling, a key task in this context is feature selection which involves finding key complementary variables across multiple data blocks that jointly provide a good expl...

The development of an enantioselective enamine‐catalysed addition of masked acetaldehyde to nitroalkenes via a rational approach helped to move away from the use of chloroform. The presented research allows the use of water as a reaction medium, therefore improving the industrial relevance of a protocol to access very important pharmaceutical inter...

Climate change, the growth in world population, high levels of food waste and food loss, and the risk of new disease or pandemic outbreaks are examples of the many challenges that threaten future food sustainability and the security of the planet and urgently need to be addressed. The fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0, has been gaining...

Three hundred forty-six (3 4 6) samples of lentils have been collected and analyzed by ATR-MIR spectroscopy. Of the investigated individuals, 283 were harvested in two Central-Italy regions (Umbria and Abruzzo), whereas the others were grown in Canada. At first, Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) was used to discriminate samples a...

Featured Application QSAR model for the determination of gut permeability of 228 pharmacological drugs at different pH conditions. Abstract The present study aims at developing a quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) model for the determination of gut permeability of 228 pharmacological drugs at different pH conditions (3, 5, 7.4, 9,...

Ensemble pre-processing is emerging as a potential tool to avoid the tiring pre-processing selection and optimization task in near-infrared (NIR) spectral modelling. Furthermore, differently pre-processed data may carry complementary information, hence, ensemble pre-processing may represent the best suited modelling option to extract all the useful...

The multi-elemental composition of three typical Italian Pecorino cheeses, Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) Pecorino Romano (PR), PDO Pecorino Sardo (PS) and Pecorino di Farindola (PF), was determined by Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES). The ICP-OES method here developed allowed the accurate and precise determ...

Dried and ground red pepper is a spice used as seasoning in various traditional dishes all over the world; nevertheless, the pedoclimatic conditions of the diverse cultivation areas provide different chemical characteristics, and, consequently, diverse organoleptic properties to this product. In the present study, the volatile profiles of 96 sample...

The aim of the present work was to develop a green multi-platform methodology for the quantification of l-DOPA in solid-state mixtures by means of MIR and NIR spectroscopy. In order to achieve this goal, 33 mixtures of racemic and pure l-DOPA were prepared and analyzed. Once spectra were collected, partial least squares (PLS) was exploited to indiv...

Sixty-eight samples of red garlic harvested in four Italian areas were analysed by means of head-space solid phase micro-extraction (HS-SPME) coupled to gas-chromatography with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to test whether the volatile composition is related with the geographical origin of the bulbs. HS-SPME/GC-MS analysis was optimized by means of a B...

Sixty samples of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) harvested in the Italian territories of Cicerale (Campania), Valentano (Lazio) and Navelli (Abruzzo) in 2019 were characterized by determination of the content of ten elements (Ca, K, P, Mg, Mo, Cu, Fe, Mn, Zn and Sr) with Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES). Classificati...

In the food industry, thermal treatments are generally an essential step to increase the shelf life of the products. This is especially true for milk and dairy products in which heat treatments help to eliminate pathogenic organisms, minimize microbiological development, and improve some sensory properties. However, they can also induce biochemical...

Calibration transfer (CT) refers to the set of chemometric techniques used to transfer (near-infrared) calibration models between spectrometers. The requirement of traditional CT methods to measure calibration standard samples has been a challenge as such measurements are difficult in real-world applications, e.g. when the instruments are located f...

Emmer is a traditional Italian wheat species attracting growing attention for the high-nutritive and dietary value. The growth of emmer consumption and the recent spreading even in areas where production was not traditional pose a risk to biodiversity and to the geographical identities. Thus, the present work aims to develop a non-destructive and r...

“Man is what he eats”: food represents one of the fundamental needs for human beings, and, therefore, food analysis is a field of utmost importance [...]

The volatiles of three typical Italian Pecorino cheeses were analysed by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) coupled with gas-chromatography with mass spectrometry detection (GC-MS) evaluating its potentiality to discriminate Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) Pecorino Romano (PR), PDO Pecorino Sardo (PS) and Pecorino di Farindola (P...

Bell pepper is the common name of the berry obtained from some varieties of the Capsicum annuum species. This agro-food is appreciated all over the world and represents one of the key ingredients of several traditional dishes. It is used as a fresh product, or dried and ground as a seasoning (e.g., paprika). Specific varieties of sweet pepper prese...

The elemental composition of 63 emmer samples produced in three different Italian territories, Monteleone di Spoleto (Umbria), Garfagnana (Tuscany) and National Park Gran Sasso-Laga (Abruzzo) were analysed by Inductively Couples Plasma-Optical Emission Spectrometry (ICP-OES) combined with microwave-assisted digestion. The ICP-OES analytical method...

In recent years, multi-modal measurements of process and product properties have become widely popular. Sometimes classical chemometric methods such as principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares regression (PLS) are not adequate to analyze this kind of data. In recent years, several multi-block methods have emerged for this purpos...

Rice is a staple food in Vietnam, and the concern about rice is much greater than that for other foods. Preventing fraud against this product has become increasingly important in order to protect producers and consumers from possible economic losses. The possible adulteration of this product is done by mixing, or even replacing, high-quality rice w...

Primary mitochondrial myopathies (PMM) are a group of mitochondrial disorders characterized by a predominant skeletal muscle involvement. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether the biochemical profile determined by Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopic technique would allow to distinguish among patients affected by progressive exte...

Pasta is a key element of the Mediterranean Diet and it has been declared by Unesco intangible cultural heritage of humanity. Despite seems a simple food, only made of semolina and water, pasta is produced following a multi-step process that strongly affect the final product. Drying stage is the one that has the greater influence on its organolepti...

Near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is widely used for non-destructive prediction of fruit traits. Common traits such as dry matter (DM) and soluble solids contents (SSC) can be predicted with reliable accuracy. However, the main problem with NIR spectroscopy is that a model developed on one batch may not perform very well when tested on other batches...

In the present article, the basic chemometric classification techniques used in Foodomics are reviewed and discussed. A distinction is made between discriminant and modeling approaches, the former focusing on identifying dissimilarities among categories while the latter defining (usually) bound class spaces based on the similarities among individua...

Data generated from spectroscopy may be deformed by artefacts due to a range of physical, chemical and environmental factors that are not of interest for the characterization of the samples under study. For example, data acquired by near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy in the diffuse reflectance mode can be affected by light scattering. This artefact,...

Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy allows rapid estimation of quality traits in fresh fruit. Several portable spectrometers are available in the market as a low-cost solution to perform NIR spectroscopy. However, portable spectrometers, being lower in cost than a benchtop counterpart, do not cover the complete near-infrared (NIR) spectral range. Ofte...

Fish and other seafood products have a limited shelf life due to favorable conditions for microbial growth and enzymatic alterations. Various preservation and/or processing methods have been developed for shelf-life extension and for maintaining the quality of such highly perishable products. Freezing and frozen storage are among the most commonly...

Muscle food products play a vital role in human nutrition due to their sensory quality and high nutritional value. One well-known challenge of such products is the high perishability and limited shelf life unless suitable preservation or processing techniques are applied. Thermal processing is one of the well-established treatments that has been mo...

Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy of fuels can suffer from scattering effects which may mask the signals corresponding to key analytes in the spectra. Therefore, scatter correction techniques are often used prior to any modelling so to remove scattering and improve predictive performances. However, different scatter correction techniques may carry c...

Physical frailty and sarcopenia (PF&S) is a prototypical geriatric condition characterized by reduced physical function and low muscle mass. The multifaceted pathophysiology of this condition recapitulates all hallmarks of aging making the identification of specific biomarkers challenging. In the present study, we explored the relationship among th...

Data generated by analytical instruments, such as spectrometers, may contain unwanted variation due to measurement mode, sample state and other external physical, chemical and environmental factors. Preprocessing is required so that the property of interest can be predicted correctly. Different correction methods may remove specific types of artefa...

Featured Application This review will offer a global overview of the chemometric approaches most commonly used in the field of spectroscopy-based food analysis and authentication. Three different scenarios will be surveyed: data exploration, calibration and classification. Basic and simple descriptions of the main multivariate techniques exploited...

An authentication study based on two different instrumental techniques, headspace solid-phase microextraction/gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and mid-/near-infrared spectroscopies, was performed with a set of 75 samples representative of traditional Italian spirit “Grappa Geographical Indication (GI)” and other Italian spirits obtained by dist...

Promoting and protecting the market of typical national territory’s products are fundamental from a commodity point of view. Often, high-added value foods are subjected to fraud. Chestnuts have extraordinary nutritional and organoleptic qualities and Italy is one of the biggest producers of this product. The purpose of the present study is to devel...

In recent years, due to advances in sensor technology, multi-modal measurement of process and products properties has become easier. However, multi-modal measurements are only of use if the data from adding new sensors is worthwhile, especially in the case of industrial applications where financial justification is needed for new sensor purchase an...

In this review, we summarize the most recent advances in monitoring changes induced in fish and other seafood, and meat and meat products, following the application of traditional processing processes by means of conventional and emerging advanced techniques. Selected examples from the literature covering relevant applications of spectroscopic meth...

Animal origin food products, including fish and seafood, meat and poultry, milk and dairy foods, and other related products play significant roles in human nutrition. However, fraud in this food sector frequently occurs, leading to negative economic impacts on consumers and potential risks to public health and the environment. Therefore, the develo...

The present study aims at developing an analytical methodology which allows correlating sensory poles of chocolate to their chemical characteristics and, eventually, to those of the cocoa beans used for its preparation. Trained panelists investigated several samples of chocolate, and they divided them into four sensorial poles (characterized by 36...

Background: Urolithiasis is the process of stone formation in the urinary tract. Its etiology is only partly known, and efficient therapeutic approaches are currently lacking. Metabolomics is increasingly used in biomarkers discovery for its ability to identify mediators of relevant (patho)physiological processes. Amino acids may be involved in ki...

Walnuts have been widely investigated because of their chemical composition, which is particularly rich in unsaturated fatty acids, responsible for different benefits in the human body. Some of these fruits, depending on the harvesting area, are considered a high value-added food, thus resulting in a higher selling price. In Italy, walnuts are harv...

Physical frailty and sarcopenia (PF&S) is a prototypical geriatric condition characterized by reduced physical function and low muscle mass. The aim of the present study was to provide an initial selection of biomarkers for PF&S using a novel multivariate analytic strategy. Two-hundred community-dwellers, 100 with PF&S and 100 non-physically frail,...

Dopaminergic nigrostriatal denervation and widespread intracellular α-synuclein accumulation are neuropathologic hallmarks of Parkinson’s disease (PD). A constellation of peripheral processes, including metabolic and inflammatory changes, are thought to contribute to neurodegeneration. In the present study, we sought to obtain insight into the mult...