The teaching is organized as follows:

Learning outcomes

The course is focused on the problematics and interactions among product, process, storage and packaging within the production processes of the food industry. Aim of the course is to provide the students: • basic knowledges and skills to understand how to deal with the food production problematics. In particular the teaching will focus on the interaction between the raw materials (ingredients) and the various production steps, in order to obtain a final product respecting the required technical, safety and commercial characteristics; • technical skills to set up the appropriate technological processes in order to reach and optimize the requested qualitative characteristics of a food product; • basic knowledges about properties and characteristics of food packaging materials in order to select the most appropriate taking into account the production process, the requested shelf-life, safety issues and costs. In order to reach the set goals, specific case-studies will be discussed during the teaching so that the students will acquire a thorough vision of real food production processes. With this aim specific visits to food industries will be organized.


Through an active participation to the practical numerical exercises, students will acquire the required knowledge and skills for developing and managing a food product process. Furthermore, participating to guided visits to food production plants or to factories manufacturing equipment for the food industries, the students will meet and discuss with technical specialists and will be able to face the problems related to the management of the production processes and also of their scale-up.

Program

Food products characteristics: safety, technical and commercial characteristic – how and why. The practical approach to the production of a food item: row material-process-product, interaction and limits. Food preservation, theoretical and practical approach; available technologies, potential applications and limits. Basic elements of food packaging. Basics of food legislation. Detailed description of selected case-studies: fruit and vegetable products; eggs and egg products; fish products; bread and bakery products; pasta, chocolate products; dairy and milk products. The various production processes will be discussed in details with respect to food safety, commercial requirements and processing opportunities and limits. Practical work will be related to the solution of technical issues while technical visits to food processing plant will be also organized. If possible specific seminars will be organized inviting professionals of the food industries. Besides the suggested working texts some reading material could be delivered to the students after the lessons.

Students will be guided to solve real problems of food product development that may occur in the food industry and will be guided to find practical answers by also solving numerical exercises. This will oblige the students to have a global approach to the various issues and to take care of all the possible interactions that may occur among the different components of the raw materials and the various production steps, including the packaging one. Within this frame, students will also participate to guided visits to food production plants or to factories manufacturing equipment for the food industry

Bibliography

Examination Methods

Oral exam - Initially the student will be asked to discuss one of the topics of the course that he considered of the utmost interest. Afterwards, the teacher will present a practical problem that may be faced in the real working life and will evaluate how the candidate will organize and utilize the scientific and technical skills acquired during the study to highlight a possible solution to the problem. In this way the student will be oriented to study for acquiring not a mere "theoretical knowledge" but a "practical" one. The student will be graded over a score of 30 points, being 18 the minimum score to pass the exam.


Students are not required to take a specific exam for the practical part of the course. However, the acquired knowledge and skills will be evaluated within the oral exam set for the theoretical part of the course, taking into account the students’ capability to adapt and use in the real productive world the acquired theoretical knowledge and skills.