Bilateral agreement China-Italy  

Within the Agreement on Scientific Cooperation between the Cnr-Institute of Membrane Technology (Cnr-Itm) and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Caas), the joint project 'Upgrading fruits and vegetable juice quality and enhancing by-products utilization through integrated membrane process' has been developed. In this framework, Alberto Figoli and Alfredo Cassano, researchers at the Cnr-Itm, have held a seminar at the Citrus Research Institute (Cri), concerning some results on the application of membrane technology in the treatment of products and by-products.

Coordinated by Cassano for Italy and by Jiao Bining for China, the project aims to evaluate the recovery of high added value compounds from products and by-products of citrus processing industry by using integrated membrane operations; improve the quality of fruit and vegetable juices by using membrane technology; investigate membrane operations based on the use of hollow-fiber membranes to remove pesticides from orange juice.

The Cri was founded by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1960 and now subordinates to both the Caas and Southwest University. As a national scientific research centre, the Cri has played an important role in the compilation and revision of national and regional plans, the implementation of major and key projects and services for industry development, and made its contribution to the sustainable development of the China citrus industry. The research team of Jiao Bining is involved in activities related to the quality and safety control of citrus products and standard formulations. Basically four major research area are under investigation: establishing standards and developing whole-course-control techniques for citrus quality and safety; developing detection techniques; developing detection techniques for citrus traceability; developing high efficiency pre-sampling methods and kits for the rapid detection of low level microbial/chemical contamination.

Fonte: Enrico Drioli, Istituto per la tecnologia delle membrane, Arcavacata di Rende , tel. + 39 0984 492039, email e.drioli@itm.cnr.it