In the last decades, the awareness of consumers about the relationship between food and health is increasing as a result of the marketing of food products with health claims, the so-called functional foods. These can be defined as “foods or ingredients of foods that provide an additional physiological benefit beyond their basic nutrition”. Low energy e-beam irradiation can represent an important in-line processing technology, which can contribute to the food quality improvement (potential food functionalization) and safety requirements, allowing food irradiation to reach more broad markets.
This project, under the IAEA Coordinated Research Project D61025 “Innovating Radiation Processing of Food with Low Energy Beams from Machine Sources”, represents a collaborative project between researchers from different institutions and countries (IST and IPB – Portugal, INCT – Poland) allowing the establishment of an international collaborative research network.
Coordinator at IST: Sandra Cabo Verde – sandracv@ctn.tecnico.ulisboa.pt