Chardonnay Marc as a New Model for Upcycled Co-products in the Food Industry: Concentration of Diverse Natural Products Chemistry for Consumer Health and Sensory Benefits

Volatile Organic Compound-Based Predictive Modeling of Smoke Taint in Wine

Smoke taint in wine has become a critical issue in the wine industry due to its significant negative impact on wine quality. Data-driven approaches including univariate analysis and predictive modeling are applied to a data set containing concentrations of 20 VOCs in 48 grape samples and 56 corresponding wine samples with a taster-evaluated smoke taint index. The resulting models for predicting the smoke taint index of wines are highly predictive when using as inputs VOC concentrations after log conversion in both grapes and wines (Pearson Correlation Coefficient PCC = 0.82; R2 = 0.68) and less so when only grape VOCs are used (Pearson Correlation Coefficient PCC = 0.76; R2 = 0.56), and the classification models also show the capacity for detecting smoke-tainted wines using both wine and grape VOC concentrations (Recall = 0.76; Precision = 0.92; F1 = 0.82) or using only grape VOC concentrations (Recall = 0.74; Precision = 0.92; F1 = 0.80). The performance of the predictive model shows the possibility of predicting the smoke taint index of the wine and grape samples before fermentation. The corresponding code of data analysis and predictive modeling of smoke taint in wine is available in the Github repository (https://github.com/IBPA/smoke_taint_prediction).

Mycelium: A Nutrient-Dense Food To Help Address World Hunger, Promote Health, and Support a Regenerative Food System

There is a need for transformational innovation within the existing food system to achieve United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2 of ending hunger within a sustainable agricultural system by 2030. Mycelium, the vegetative growth form of filamentous fungi, may represent a convergence of several features crucial for the development of food products that are nutritious, desirable, scalable, affordable, and environmentally sustainable. Mycelium has gained interest as technology advances demonstrate its ability to provide scalable biomass for food production delivering good flavor and quality protein, fiber, and essential micronutrients urgently needed to improve public health. We review the potential of mycelium as an environmentally sustainable food to address malnutrition and undernutrition, driven by food insecurity and caloric dense diets with less than optimal macro- and micronutrient density.

Upcycling flavanol-rich Chardonnay and Pinot noir grape thinned clusters as potentially functional food ingredients in cocoa-based products

In California, over 3.4 million tons of wine grapes were crushed in 2020 while every year roughly 20% of the grape mass goes unused. Grape cluster thinning at veraison, a common agricultural practice to ensure color homogeneity in wine grapes, adds to the production costs and generates substantial on-farm loss during grapevine cultivation in which the health-promoting values of thinned clusters (unripe grapes) are usually overlooked. In particular, the health-promoting properties of flavanol monomers, specifically (+)-catechin and (-)-epicatechin, and their oligomeric procyanidins, have been extensively studied in cocoa and chocolate but not so much in grape thinned clusters in recent epidemiology studies. As part of the important agricultural by-products upcycling effort, the current study compared thinned clusters from Chardonnay and Pinot noir, two premium wine grape varieties cultivated in California, to a traditionally Dutch (alkalized) cocoa powder that has been widely used in food applications. Thinned cluster fractions from Chardonnay and Pinot noir grapes grown in the North Coast of California showed much higher concentrations of flavanol monomers and procyanidins, with 208.8-763.5 times more (+)-catechin, 3.4-19.4 times more (-)-epicatechin, and 3.8-12.3 times more procyanidins (by degree of polymerization DP 1-7) than those in the traditionally Dutch cocoa powder. These flavanol-rich thinned clusters that are also considered as plant-based natural products suggested great potential to be functional ingredients in cocoa-based products-which have been ubiquitously perceived as flavanol-rich products by consumers-to enhance their overall dietary flavanol content.