Frankrike - Optimisation of industrial processes for meat/fish by the use of micro-biospectroscopy

It is generally accepted that the quality of connective tissue and myofiber proteins in the raw fish/meat material is together with the process determining the quality of the final product. Nevertheless, the biophysical relationship between the raw meat/f ish quality and the final product is far from understood. The investigation of this relationship will gain important knowledge about how certain raw material qualities have to be used and how industrial processes can be improved in order to gain an optima l final product quality. The use of micro-spectroscopic methods allows us to study in situ and with high spatial resolution chemical changes during the industrial processes. In particular chemical changes like protein denaturation, degradation of connecti ve tissue and water movement will be monitored during the different processes by Raman, FT-IR, fluorescence micro-spectroscopy and LF-NMR T2 relaxometry. The proposed activities of this project are an extension of several already on-going research project s in this field. The component that will be added through this project is the use of Raman and full-spectrum fluorescence microscopy, that have recently shown in medical science to be valuable methods for the investigation of tissue degradiation. The Fren ch partners have both resources and unique competencies related to the field of tissue degradation from applications in medical science, competencies around muscle structure and connective tissue and multivariate statistics for multiway data tables as gen erated by the different spectroscopic techniques in this project. Together with the French and Danish partners we will seek to establish a European network working with biospectroscopic methods for food quality and safety applications.