Caterina Durante

University of Modena and Reggio Emilia | UNIMO · Department of Chemical and Geological Sciences

This study presents a comprehensive metabolomic analysis of Parmigiano Reggiano samples to differentiate between those designated as Mountain Quality Certification (QC) and conventional Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). Despite following the same production protocol, these cheese varieties differ in the cows’ feeding regimes and milk stable lo...

Sustainable waste management is an extremely important issue due to its environmental, economic, and social impacts. Knowledge of the chemical composition of the waste produced is a starting point for its valorization. This research focuses, for the first time, on the by-products of pasta condiment production, starting with their characterization....

Cannabidiol (CBD) is the main non-psychoactive phytocannabinoid derived from Cannabis sativa L. It is now an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), given its usage in treating some types of pediatric epilepsy. For this reason, this compound requires a deep characterization in terms of purity and origin. Previous research work has shown two impurit...

The study examines the unique production process of Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena PDO (ABTM), emphasizing its complex phases and the impact of raw materials and artisanal skill on its flavor characteristics. Analytical tests focused on the volatile composition of vinegars from different wood barrels at different aging stages, using solid-p...

This work tested near-infrared (NIR) and UV-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy coupled with chemometrics to characterize flours from different starch origins. In particular, eighteen starch-containing flours (e.g., type 00 flour, rye, barley, soybean, chestnut, potato, spelt, buckwheat, oat, millet, rice, durum wheat, amaranth, chickpea, sesame, corn, h...

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...

Policosanols (PCs) refer to a mixture of long-chain aliphatic alcohols. Sugar cane is the main industrial source of PCs, but others, including beeswax and Cannabis sativa L., are also known. In the raw material PCs are bonded to fatty acids to form long-chain esters, known as waxes. PCs are mainly used as a cholesterol-lowering product, even though...

In the present feasibility study, SPME Arrow-GC-MS method coupled with chemometric techniques, was used for investigating the impact of two different storage conditions, namely freezing and refrigeration, on volatile organic compounds (VOCs) of different commercial breads. The SPME Arrow technology was used as it is a novel extraction technique, ab...

The food industry needs tools to improve the efficiency of their production processes by minimizing waste, detecting timely potential process issues, as well as reducing the efforts and workforce devoted to laboratory analysis while, at the same time, maintaining high-quality standards of products. This can be achieved by developing on-line monitor...

In this study, the trend of VOCs of dietary fiber samples, coming from three different watermelon cultivars Citrullus lanatus L. (variety Gavina®®, Crimson sweet, and Asahi myiako) was investigated. This foodstuff, obtained as a by-product of residual agri-food production, has gained increasing attention because of its many bioactive components and...

The scientific interest in Cannabis sativa L. analysis has been rapidly increasing in recent years, especially for what concerns cannabinoids, plant secondary metabolites which are well known for having many biological properties. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is frequently used for both the qualitative and quantitative analysis of...

In this study, the trend of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in dietary fiber samples from the winter melon (Cucumis Melo var. Inodorus, Yellow Canary type) were investigated. This foodstuff, obtained as a by-product of agri-food production, has gained increasing attention and is characterized by many bioactive components and a high dietary-fiber...

The aim of this work is to assess the potentialities of the synergistic combination of an ultra-fast chromatography-based electronic nose as a fingerprinting technique and multivariate data analysis in the context of food quality control and to investigate the influence of some factors, i.e., basil variety, cut, and year of crop, in the final aroma...

Wine identification is one of the most important aspects in the classification of wines and consumer protection. In particular, assuring wine authenticity is a crucial issue on which researchers are focusing on. This study aims to evaluate the feasibility of using chemical (B, Pb and Sr concentration) and isotopic compositions (δ¹¹B, 20yPb/20xPb, ⁸...

Basil is a plant known worldwide for its culinary and health attributes. It counts more than a hundred and fifty species and many more chemo-types due to its easy cross-breeds. Each species and each chemo-type have a typical aroma pattern and selecting the proper one is crucial for the food industry. Twelve basil varieties have been studied over th...

Geographical origin and authenticity of food are topics of interest for both consumers and producers. Among the different indicators used for traceability studies, ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr isotopic ratio has provided excellent results. In this study, the production chains of the balsamic vinegars of the Modena province, the Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena...

The metal content in some samples of horse chestnut seeds (Aesculus hippocastanum) was monitored over time (years 2016–2019) considering the two most common and representative Mediterranean varieties: the pure species (AHP, which gives white flowers) and a hybrid one (AHH, which gives pink flowers). The selected elemental composition of the samples...

Raman spectroscopy, and handheld spectrometers in particular, are gaining increasing attention in food quality control as a fast, portable, non-destructive technique. Furthermore, this technology also allows for measuring the intact sample through the packaging and, with respect to near infrared spectroscopy, it is not affected by the water content...

In this Chapter, the state-of-the-art approaches for the classification of multi-way data is presented and discussed. The theoretical basis and applicative guidelines for multilinear (or multi-way) Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (NPLS-DA) and Multi-way Soft Independent Modeling of Class Analogy (NSIMCA) are detailed. Furthermore, two-d...

Background and methods: Wall paintings and architectural surfaces in outdoor environments are exposed to several physical, chemical and biological agents, hence they are often treated with different products to prevent or slow down their deterioration. Among the factors that have to be taken into account in the selection of the most suitable treat...

This study summarizes the results obtained from a systematic and long-term project aimed at the development of tools to assess the provenance of food in the oenological sector. 87Sr/86Sr isotope ratios were measured on a representative set of soils, branches, and wines sampled from the Chianti Classico wine production area. In particular, owing to...

This study summarizes the results obtained from a systematic and long-term project aimed at the development of tools to assess the provenance of food in the oenological sector. In particular, ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr isotope ratios were measured on statistically representative set of soils, vine branches and wines sampled in the production district of Modena, wor...

Semolina pasta represents one of the most important dishes in Italian cuisine worldwide. Italy is the leader in its production and, recently, the worldwide diffusion of its production has begun to grow tremendously. The perceived quality of a food product, such as pasta, is a key feature that allows a company to increase and maintain the competitiv...

The need to consider variability due to raw materials, seasonality, agricultural practices, and food processing, that are aspects which all play a role in authenticity tasks, justifies the need for chemometrics methods. This chapter presents a few basic chemometrics methods, such as exploratory data analysis, multiway data analysis, and data fusion...

This chapter focuses on the heavy elements isotope ratio for food traceability purposes. It considers the inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry instrumental technique with multi-collector detector (MC-ICP/MS), due to its high precision and accuracy of the isotopic ratios, in addition to the thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) techniq...

In the development of a geographical traceability model, it is necessary to understand if the value of the monitored indicators in a food is correlated to its origin or if it is also influenced by 'external factors' such as those coming from its production. In this study, a deeper investigation of the trend of direct geographical traceability indic...

Geographical origin and authenticity of food are topics of interest for both consumers and producers. Among the different indicators used for traceability studies, (87)Sr/(86)Sr isotopic ratio has provided excellent results. In this study, two analytical approaches for wine sample pre-treatment, microwave and low temperature mineralisation, were in...

Nowadays the necessity to reveal the hidden information from complex data sets is increasing due to the development of high-throughput instrumentation. The possibility to jointly analyze data sets arising from different sources (e.g. different analytical determinations/platforms) allows capturing the latent information that would not be extracted b...

Mercury stable isotopes are an excellent tool to distinguish among different sources of this element and to investigate its transformation processes in environmental compartments and in food webs. To do this, an highly precise and sensitive method was set up by using a cold vapor generator system (CVG) to introduce gaseous Hg0 into a multicollector...

The Augusta Bay is a nearly closed marine basin located on the southeastern coast of Sicily (southern Italy) which has suffered, since the early 60s, the effect of the uncontrolled chemical discharge of Hg from the most important chlor-alkali plant in Italy (Le Donne and Ciafani, 2008), resulting in high Hg concentrations in sediments, seawater, at...

Mercury isotopes can be an effective tool to investigate about the biogeochemical cycle of Hg, in order to distinguish among different sources and prevent its well-known pollution in environment and food webs. In this work, we set up a method for Hg isotopic ratio determination by multicollector ICP-MS spectrometry by using a cold vapour generator...

In the last decades, mankind has become totally aware about the importance of food quality: nowadays authentication and traceability are words of general use.Food authentication verifies how much a food is in accordance with its label description and law and it could be considered a further guarantee for the quality and safety of a foodstuff.The tr...

In the food research and production field, system complexity is increasing and several new challenges are emerging every day. This implies an urgent necessity to extract information and obtain models capable of inferring the underlying relationships that link all the variability sources which characterize food or its production process (e.g. compos...

The main goal of this study was to evaluate (87)Sr/(86)Sr ratio in different matrices, namely soils, branches, and grape juices, of an oenological food chain in order to develop a robust analytical strategy able to link the investigated food to its territory of origin. The (87)Sr/(86)Sr has been used as traceability marker and several aspects, affe...

Multilinear PLS (NPLS) and its discriminant version (NPLS-DA) are very diffuse tools to model multi-way data arrays. Analysis of NPLS weights and NPLS regression coefficients allows data patterns, feature correlation and covariance structure to be depicted. In this study we propose an extension of the Variable Importance in Projection (VIP) paramet...

The interest of consumers, as well as of producers, toward origin and quality of food has increased over the last years. As regards the oenological field, the quality of wine is in many cases related to the concept of terroir (history, geographical origin, typical raw materials and methods, ecc.). In this context, the assessment of the link between...

Among the global pollutants, Mercury could be considered one of most harmful. For this reason, the study of the distribution and of the sources of this element is relevant for the aims of environmental protection and the human health safeguard. In these contexts, the determination of mercury stable isotopes ratios and, in particular, the identifica...

Mercury is one of the most harmful pollutant present on Earth and shows some peculiar characteristics which make this element relevant to study. Hg undergoes to complex biogeochemical transformations in the environment and shows different isotopic fractionation phenomena of both mass dependant (MDF) and mass independent (MIF) nature. The study of t...

1. Introduction Mercury is one of the most harmful elements present in the Earth, and has both natural and anthropological sources. Moreover, Hg can undergo many different transformation pathways during its biogeochemical, or industrial, cycles which in general involve redox reaction, both abiotic and biotic, and phase changes [1]. Despite the toxi...

The present research is part of a project dealing with the development of analytical methodologies mainly based on primary indicators, such as isotopic ratios of stable and radiogenic elements, for the authenticity and geographical traceability of oenological food, typical of the Modena district. In particular, considering the objective of establis...

A hierarchical data fusion approach has been developed proposing multivariate curve resolution (MCR) as a variable reduction tool. The case study presented concerns the characterization of soil samples of the Modena District. It was performed in order to understand, at a pilot study stage, the geographical variability of the zone prior to planning...

Lambrusco is a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) red wine of Modena (Italy) produced according to the production regulation (Decreto Ministeriale (DM) July 27, 2009; GU no. 184-187-188, 13/08/2009). Here the use of (1)H NMR spectroscopy as molecular fingerprints of several PDO Lambrusco wines was proposed to serve as indicators of authenticity...

Mercury is one of the most harmful elements present in the Earth, and has both natural and anthropological sources. Moreover, Hg can undergo to many different transformation pathways during its biogeochemical, or industrial, cycles which in general involve redox reaction, both abiotic and biotic, and phase changes (1). Despite the toxicity of this...

Aim of this work is to assess the potentialities of the X-ray powder diffraction technique as fingerprinting technique, i.e. as a preliminary tool to assess soil samples variability, in terms of geochemical features, in the context of food geographical traceability. A correct approach to sampling procedure is always a critical issue in scientific i...

The results obtained by means of Molecular Dynamics simulations and Multiway Explorative Data Analysis on ADAMTS4, ADAMTS5 and MMP13 complexed with Marimastat and two cis-1(S)2(R)-amino-2-indanol ligands suggest that determinant characteristics for ligand binding and selectivity among the three enzymes are to be found in the different protein confo...

The p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase is activated by environmental stress and cytokines and plays a role in transcriptional regulation and inflammatory responses. Factors influencing the activity and selectivity of the p38α mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitors have been investigated in this paper by inspecting the binding orientation and...

Potentially bioactive fluorine-containing glasses of formula 46.2SiO(2)·24.3Na(2)O·(26.9-x)CaO·2.6P(2)O(5)·xCaF(2) [x = (0), 5, 10, 15] have been studied: the study was carried out as a function of fluorine percentage, dimensions and time of soaking in SBF. The results are compared to those obtained in the same conditions for Bioglass(®) 45S5. Due...

This chapter appraises the seeds of horse chestnuts (. Aesculus hippocastanum [AH]) and their derived products. Escin, the major bioactive principle in AH seeds, has shown satisfactory evidence of clinically significant activity in the treatment of chronic venous insufficiency, hemorrhoids, postoperative edema, and mammary induration. There is some...

The use of a Dynamic Headspace System (DHS) device combined with a Thermal Desorption Unit (TDU) interfaced to a Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS) system is proposed for the determination of furfurals in oenological products. An experimental design protocol has been employed for the optimization of the instrumental settings concerning DH...

Thermoplastic polymers can be viewed as a dynamic framework in which additives allocation is strongly dependent on the system' chemistry. Considering the complexity of the distribution phenomena that may occur in plastics obtained by blending polymeric resins with different additives, this work constitutes an attempt to the description of the behav...

In the literature there are only fewpapers concernedwith classification methods for multi-way arrays. Themost common procedure, by far, is to unfold the multi-way data array into an ordinary matrix and then to apply the traditional multivariate tools for classification. As opposed to unfolding the data several possibilities exist for building class...

The present investigation focuses on the monitoring of furfurals along the production chain of the aged vinegar Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena, from the starting raw material to the final product, in order to control the quality and safety of this food. In particular, the aim of the study is to achieve a reduction in the furfurals content a...

Wheat flour plays a pivotal role in determining the overall quality of bread (loaf dimensions, crumb texture and consistency). A precise knowledge of flour chemical and technological properties is of paramount importance for the baking industry, to tune the modifications of the recipe and production parameters. However, it is still common to have t...

The performance of the molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to obtain the structure of silica glasses containing different concentrations of alkali oxides has been tested. An optimal WD simulation procedure (including cooling cycle, MD constants and ensemble used) has been developed by means of experimental design methodologies (DOE), firstly restri...

The present study is aimed at evaluating the possibility to predict bread specifications, for an industrial bread-making process, on the basis of the properties of flour employed in production. The flour delivered at the production plant, of which rheological and chemical properties were available, were analysed by means of Near Infrared Spectrosco...

The metabolic profile of human healthy and neoplastic colorectal tissues was obtained using ex vivo High-Resolution Magic Angle Spinning (HR-MAS) NMR spectroscopy. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Partial Least Squares Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) were applied to NMR data in order to highlight the biochemical differences between healthy an...

The combination of different point mutations in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which are defined as haplogroups, may cause modification in organelle function and may be involved in several pathologies. We analyzed the distribution of mtDNA polymorphisms in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients with lipodystrophy, a relevant adverse event...

Cooked must is the starting raw material in Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena (ABTM) production, and the cooking process is a crucial step to ensure quality and safety standards. In particular, the furfural content has to be strictly monitored. In this study, we followed, directly at the production plant, nine cooking processes, differing for...

The potential of near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy to characterise doughs for industrial bread making, directly at the production plant, was investigated. Different stages of dough processing have been monitored at-line, employing a Fourier transform-NIR instrument equipped with an optical fibre. Parallel, factors analysis has been used to study the...

The present research is aimed at monitoring the evolution of the volatile organic compounds of different samples of aceto balsamico tradizionale of modena (ABTM) during ageing. The flavouring compounds, headspace fraction, of the vinegars of four batterie were sampled by solid phase microextraction technique (SPME), and successively analysed by gas...

Investigations have been conducted on some samples of naturally desiccated horse-chestnuts (Aesculus hippocastanum), representative of the two most common mediterranean varieties: the pure species (AHP, giving white flowers), and a hybrid (AHH, giving pink flowers). Different experimental techniques have been used to gain more information on morpho...

Polychromatic flow cytometry (PFC) allows the simultaneous determination of multiple antigens in the same cell, resulting in the generation of a high number of subsets. As a consequence, data analysis is the main difficulty with this technology. Here we show the use of cluster analysis (CA) and principal component analyses (PCA) to simplify multico...

This work can be seen as an attempt to develop an analytical procedure in the context of quality control and authenticity assessment of typical food. To this aim, head-space mass spectrometry (HS-MS) coupled with multivariate data analysis, is proposed as a fast technique for furnishing a clear visualization and a suitable interpretation of the age...

Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena is a typical Italian food product of protected denomination of origin, obtained by alcoholic fermentation and acetic bio-oxidation of cooked musts, and it is aged for at least 12 years in series of wooden casks. The product suitable for marketing is qualified by sensory examination on the whole of 13 sensory p...

Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale of Modena (ABTM) is a typical product (PDO denomination) of the province of Modena produced by cooked grape must which undergoes a long ageing period (at least 12 years) in series of wooden casks (batterie). The study of the transformations of this product during ageing is extremely relevant in order to control the auth...

The application of multi-way models in food analysis as in many other research fields is rapidly increasing, above all because it can significantly help to improve visualization and interpretation of complex multivariate data characterized by different sources of variability. Furthermore, in food authentication tasks a fingerprinting strategy is fr...

In the present work, we explored the possibility of using near-infrared spectroscopy in order to quantify the degree of adulteration of durum wheat flour with common bread wheat flour. The multivariate calibration techniques adopted to this aim were PLS and a wavelet-based calibration algorithm, recently developed by some of us, called WILMA. Both...

Preprocessing of chromatographic and spectral data is an important aspect of analytical sciences. In particular, recent advances in proteomics have resulted in the generation of large data sets that require analysis. To assist accurate comparison of chemical signals, we propose two methods for the alignment of multiple spectral data sets. Based on...

A novel feature selection and classification algorithm (WPTER) based on the wavelet packet transform has been applied to the discrimination of balsamic vinegars, namely the typical made “Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena”, which gained the PDO denomination on the year 2000, from the industrial made “Aceto Balsamico” of the Modena district. All...

Qualità, sicurezza ed igiene sono caratteristiche che i consumatori ricercano sempre più nei prodotti alimentari che acquistano e consumano. Tracciabilità geografica e di processo, invece, sono aspetti che i produttori spesso riportano come sinonimi di qualità dei prodotti alimentari in modo da trasmettere una maggiore fiducia nei loro clienti. La...