Aérial

Competencies:

Aérial, Technical Institute for Food industry (ITAI)) and qualified Technology Resource Center, was created in 1985. Its competences fields are multisectorial applications of radiation processing, food quality validation and freeze-drying. Aérial’s expertise is based on a multidisciplinary team of 20 people (doctors, engineers, senior technicians in physics, biology, food chemistry). Aérial is positioned in the food processing fields as a technical centre with specific and transversal competences in all aspects related to food quality: food safety, nutritional value and organoleptic quality.

Aérial’s work in the field of nutrition began in 1986. Its expertise on nutritional quality of foods is based on continuous innovation through R & D studies conducted in partnership with upstream research (University, CNRS, INSERM, INRA) and by active participation in various national networks, standardization groups, technical committees. (Aerial is a member of the French Association of Technical Coordination for food industry; ACTIA).

Nutrition is an important focus of its activity in relation to the growing interest of food industry in the aspects of health claims of their products. To strengthen this field, Aérial created in 2006, the UMT 06.3 (Mixt Technological Unit), on "Analytical Methods and Nutrimarkers” which was certified by the French Ministry in charge of food. The UMT 06.3 is a partnership between Aérial and the Laboratoire de Chimie Analytique et Sciences de l'Aliment, UMR UDS / CNRS 7178. Its aim is to develop and / or improve analytical methods for identification of Nutrimarkers (probiotics, phospholipids, polyphenols).

Aérial is in part supported by the Région Alsace, the Ministry of Research, the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries and the European community.

Major research topics in Nutrition:

1. The optimization of analytical methods for identification and characterization of nutritional constituents (eg polyphenols, phytosterols, vitamins, phospholipids, isothiocyanates)
2. The development of a proteomic approach to screening and pre-selection of lactic bacteria with probiotic potential effect.
3. The generation of composition tables for nutrimarkers (eg polyphenols, phytosterols, and B vitamins)
4. Assessing the impact of processes on food nutritional values.