Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche
The National Research Council (CNR) is the largest public research institution in Italy, the only one under the Research Ministry performing multidisciplinary activities. Founded as legal person on 18 November 1923, CNR’s mission is to perform research and promote innovation and competitiveness of the national industrial system, internationalisation of the national research system, and to provide technologies and solutions to emerging public and private needs, as well as to contribute to the qualification of human resources. CNR has about 8.000 employees, more than half are researchers and technologists, and 4.000 young researchers. CNR is organized in 7 departments. The Institute of BioEconomy (CNR-IBE) (125 researches, 200 total employees, 6 regional sites, including Bologna), belongs to the Biology, Agriculture and Food Science Department (DISBA). IBE was created in 2019 through the fusion of two CNR Institutes (Institute of Biometeorology IBIMET and of Forest Science IVALSA). The IBE research activity is funded by private and public Institutions: regional, national and European. In the last 5 years, IBE has participated in 6 H2020 projects (3 active); 8 Life (5 active); 5 ESA (3 active); 10 Erasmus (6 active).The Institute has active researchers in the pillars: 1) Primary production and biodiversity; 2)Agroforestry, wood technology and derivatives. 3)Climate, meteorology and oceanography; 4) Biotechnologies, bioenergy, process and product technologies; 5) Sustainable use of natural resources and ecosystem services. Pillar 1 includes research activities and know-how in Sensory and Consumer Science, available for the present project.
Main task in the project
IBE has expertise in Sensory and Consumer Science, applied to the assessment and improvement of quality in the agri-food sectors. In this project IBE investigates fruit quality attributes for European berry GenRes emphasised by sensory profiles and consumer hedonic responses. Through surveys and interviews proposed to food chain actors, the current and predicted berry food chain and market requirements will be explored. To foster an effective network interaction, will be developed multilingual descriptor tools and protocols to describe sensory properties of each berry species. A common protocol for sensory judges and panel leaders training on classical and advanced sensory methods, will also be developed and applied to define profiles of accessions provided by the partner of the project. IBE will analyze on selected accessions the volatile components associate with taste and aroma will by headspace sampling followed by GC-MS.
