On the benefits and challenges of blockchains for managing food supply chains.

The expansion of the food industry, within and beyond national borders, has resulted in complex collaborative networks and supply chains. The management culture adopted for food supply chains has an impact on the quality of the end product and the vitality of the businesses involved. In this report, we focus on the use of blockchain technology, and distributed ledgers in general, for managing supply chains in the food and agricultural sectors. We explore the challenges with which typical management systems are faced, such as food safety, food fraud, and inefficient processes, as well as ethical aspects like fair trade, animal welfare, and the environmental impact of food production. The use of blockchain-based systems for managing a supply chain offers significant benefits, such as faster and more reliable traceability. Our analysis, involving small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from Denmark, highlights that SMEs could benefit from blockchain-based systems that encourage fair trade and authenticity documentation, expose good practices, and decrease management costs. However, due to a lack of important policies and standards, and due to the limited understanding of the technology itself, its large-scale adoption is at the moment immature. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry.

Examination of the phenolic profile and antioxidant activity of the leaves of the Australian native plant Smilax glyciphylla.

Together with the sweet principle component glycyphyllin A (3), seven phenolic compounds including two new dihydrochalcone rhamnopyranosides, glycyphyllin B (1) and glycyphyllin C (2), and five known flavonoids, catechin (4), kaempferol-3-O-ß-D-glucopyranoside (5), quercetin-3-O-ß-D-glucopyranoside (6), kaempferol-3-O-ß-neohesperidoside (7), and 2R,3R-dihydrokaempferol-3-O-ß-D-glucopyranoside (8), have been isolated from the ethanolic extract of the leaves of Smilax glyciphylla for the first time. The structures of these compounds were characterized by spectroscopic methods including UV, MS, and 1D and 2D NMR. In vitro antioxidant capacity tests employing FRAP and DPPH assays indicated that 1, 4, and 6 exhibited potent antioxidant activity and are the key phenolics responsible for the antioxidant activity of the leaf extract of S. glyciphylla.

Analysis of four polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in plant-based food supplements-results of a collaborative study.

The determination of carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in food supplements is challenging, especially due to the presence of other e.g. heterogeneous PAH-like compounds in the matrix. A collaborative study with 12 participants was conducted in order to assess performance characteristics of a fast method intended to analyse the four regulated PAHs (PAH 4) benzo[b]fluoranthene [BbF], benz[a]anthracene [BaA], chrysene [CHR] and benzo[a]pyrene [BaP] in five different plant-based food supplements in the form of capsules, powder, and tablets. The principle of the method includes the extraction of PAHs with ethyl acetate: cyclohexane followed by a two-step SPE cleanup and final analysis by GC-MS or LC-FLD. The regulated maximum level for BaP is 10 µg/kg and, for the PAH 4, 50 µg/kg. Accordingly, the method was validated for the regulated PAH 4 analytically challenging concentration range from 2.5 µg/kg to 6.9 µg/kg. The performance criteria for the method set in European Regulation No 333/2007 for the overall repeatability, reproducibility (HorRat values below 2), and recovery (range 50-120%) were fulfilled. Based on the statistical evaluation of the results, it was concluded that the method is a suitable alternative to existing methods and should be studied for additional matrices.