ISSN 2285-1364, ISSN CD-ROM 2285-5521, ISSN ONLINE 2285-1372, ISSN-L 2285-1364
 

Published in Scientific Bulletin. Series F. Biotechnologies, Vol. XXIV, Issue 2
Written by Andrei-Georgian PÎRVAN, Ștefana JURCOANE, Florentina MATEI

Camelina (Camelina sativa) is a flower plant belonging to the family Brassicaceae, originating in Eastern Europe. Camelina oil has many applications in various fields such as cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, animal feed etc. The oil obtained from Camelina seeds has a high content of fatty acids with 50-60% unsaturated fatty acids, 35-40% omega 3- fatty acids and 15-20% omega 6-fatty acids. The main attractive features are: drought and frost tolerance, disease and pest resistance, a considerably high seed oil content, and satisfactory seed yields, in particular under low-input management and in limiting environments. The environmental benefits of the crop and a multipurpose applicability of the oil make Camelina sativa a promising oil-seed crop. Animal feeding has been identified to be a key factor in environmental sustainability. For this reason, by carrying out a life cycle assessment, there was many investigations focused on studying the environmental performance of the production of Camelina sativa in different regions of the world such as United States of America, Spain and France. For all of this utilities, Camelina sativa can be a part of circular economy in future.

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Published in Scientific Bulletin. Series F. Biotechnologies, Vol. XXIII
Written by Laura-Simona IRIMESCU, Narcisa BĂBEANU, Florentina MATEI

The present review aims to map the various species of orchids in Romania, in search of reported biological active substances. Several authors have reported that the main biological active compounds of this botanical group are tannins, volatile oils and phenanthrene quinones, which are not water soluble. The review will pay a special attention to autochthonous Orchidaceae species. In Romania most of these plants were identified in the Iron Gates Natural Park and surroundings. The data analysis will also cover the polyphenolic profile of the underground parts of Orchidaceae group to evaluate their antioxidant and antimicrobial potential, as well as to identify some other biochemical reported compounds as source for new biotechnological applications.

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Published in Scientific Bulletin. Series F. Biotechnologies, Vol. XXIV
Written by Georgiana MICU, Florentina ISRAEL-ROMING, Călina Petruța CORNEA

L-asparaginase is a hydrolase able to mediate the cleavage reaction of the amide bond from asparagine to ammonia and aspartate. This hydrolysis reaction plays a very important role in the medicine, bringing the solution to diseases considered incurable such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), malignant diseases of the lymphoid system, different lymphomas, being a treatment used in chemotherapy schemes. Despite the adverse effects that it can trigger in the body, L-asparaginase remains the main treatment for such diseases. It is well known that microorganisms, mainly bacteria, are able to produce important quantities of L-asparaginase. However, the level of this enzyme need to be improved in order to reduce the costs, and this could be realized both by identification of new microbial producers or optimization of the production technologies. Moreover, the new sources of L-asparaginase must be free of glutaminase and urease activity, these enzymes being involved in the side effects of enzymatic treatment of ALL. For this reason, the identification of new sources of L-asparaginase, free of glutaminase as well as urease, remains an important goal for researches in domain. The present review aims to discuss the microbial sources of L-asparaginase, the methods used for screening new microbial strains isolated from different sources able to produce large quantities of L-asparaginase, the molecular aspects of the main enzyme producers, as well as the characteristics of enzymes and their applications.

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Published in Scientific Bulletin. Series F. Biotechnologies, Vol. XXIV, Issue 2
Written by Monica ENACHE, Adriana NEAGOIE

The Lamiaceae family is well known for its aromatic plants that are important in the food, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industry. Also, there are Lamiaceae species that are important melliferous plants, or are used as ornamental plants. In Romania several Lamiaceae species of pharmaceutical relevance can be found (most are cultivated, but some are also spontaneous plants): Hyssopus officinalis, Lamium album, Lavandula angustifolia, Majorana hortensis, Marrubium vulgare, Melissa officinalis, Mentha piperita, Ocimum basilicum, Origanum vulgare, Rosmarinus officinalis, Salvia officinalis, Satureja hortensis, Thymus serpyllum, Thymus vulgaris. Lamiaceae species have specific characteristics both at macroscopic level as well as at microscopic level, for example their stem and leaves have numerous secretory hairs that can be analysed using wet mounts of hand-sections, surface preparations or samples of powdered plant material. Thus, the present study illustrates the results of such a microscopic approach, for 10 Lamiaceae species obtained commercially in Bucharest (Romania).

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Published in Scientific Bulletin. Series F. Biotechnologies, Vol. XXV, Issue 1
Written by Sorin NITU, Mihaela GEICU-CRISTEA, Florentina MATEI

The paper aimed to present a review of plant proteases used as milk coagulants in cheesemaking. Plant proteases have been used as milk-clotting enzymes since ancient times. These milk-clotting enzymes are starting to become an alternative to the calf rennet. Due to a high price of the calf rennet and a very limited availability, religious restrictions or lacto-vegetarian diet, milk-clotting enzymes obtained from plants are the subject of extensive research. They are present in a various plants and can be obtained from all plant parts: root, stem, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds. Most research has shown that plant milk-clotting enzymes belong to aspartic proteases but have been reported also enzymes from serine proteases and cysteine proteases with this activity as well. Plant proteases with milk-clotting activity have been researched in terms of coagulation activity and proteolytic activity. Most plant milk- clotting enzymes develop an excessive proteolytic activity leading to lower yields of cheese, defects of texture and bitter flavours. The research will continue in order to meet the increasing global demand for a good and diversified cheese production.

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Published in Scientific Bulletin. Series F. Biotechnologies, Vol. XXIV
Written by Eleonora CALZONI, Alessio CESARETTI, Nicolò MONTEGIOVE, Debora CASAGRANDE PIERANTONI, Laura CORTE, Luca ROSCINI, Carla EMILIANI, Leonardo LEONARDI, Gianluigi CARDINALI

Agricultural and food industries produce a lot of waste biomass which needs to be disposed of. In recent years it has been understood how these biomasses can be recovered and transformed in order to produce organic derivative products with high added value to be reintroduced on the market. A non-exhaustive list of these biotechnological products includes protein hydrolysates, consisting of bioactive peptides and amino acids, growth-stimulating fertilizers for plants and nutritional additives for animal feed. The recovery and transformation of the protein component into protein hydrolysates gives great added value to the waste biomass and is a process that is generally performed chemically. This approach results however unfavourable because of the possible production of toxic side-products, and the high level of energy required, which makes this process eco-unfriendly. In the light of all these limitations, we have designed and developed a mixed procedure, applicable to plant-derived wastes, based on a microbial preliminary degradation, followed by a mild thermic treatment to produce protein hydrolysates from agriculture waste biomass.

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Published in Scientific Bulletin. Series F. Biotechnologies, Vol. XXIV, Issue 2
Written by Ana-Maria ISTRATE, Silviu-Gabriel STROE, Ioan GONTARIU, Georgiana Gabriela CODINĂ

Due to it high nutritional and sensorial characteristics of pumpkin seed flour (PSF) it is suistanable to be used as ingredient in different food products such as cereal products. The objective of this study was to analyze the effect of PSF addition (from 0% up to 20%) in a meal form (PSF) in a refined wheat flour on the mixing dough rheological properties by using Farinograph and Extensograph devices and pasting dough rheological properties by using Amylograph and Falling Number devices. It seems that by PSF addition the water absorption capacity increased, whereas compared to the control sample the dough stability and development time decreased. According to Extensograph device the dough extensibility decreased with the increased level of PSF addition in wheat flour. The dough pasting properties showed that by PSF addition the Falling Number and peak viscosity decreased whereas the gelatinization temperature and temperature at peak viscosity increased.

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Published in Scientific Bulletin. Series F. Biotechnologies, Vol. XXIII
Written by Umesh MADAR, Devarajan THANGADURAI, Kusum Pramod ANGADI, Vadakkethil Balakrishnan SREEKUMAR, Jeyabalan SANGEETHA

A precise understanding of genetic diversity and relatedness of Pinanga dicksonii (Roxb.) is an important component in its genetic improvement and germplasm conservation. P. dicksonii is an understory endemic palm of Western Ghats of Karnataka. The genetic diversity analysis among nine genotypes of P. dicksonii has been carried out using SSR markers. Among the 10 tested SSR markers, 9 successfully revealed polymorphism, SSRs demonstrating 123 alleles in total, with a range of 20 to 22 alleles at each primer. Allele frequency at each locus ranged from 22.22% to 100% with a mean of 71.92%. The PIC of each primer varied from 0.25 to 0.87 with an average of 0.38. The UPGMA-based clustering analysis performed by NTSYS pc program (version 2.0) revealed that among the 9 studied genotypes, there was a high level of polymorphism among some genotypes, as well as genetic similarities, with index values ranging from 0.473 to 0.928.

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Published in Scientific Bulletin. Series F. Biotechnologies, Vol. XXIV, Issue 2
Written by Șerban-Eugen CUCU, Mona Elena POPA

Bread shelf life in our society is a problem if we look in food waste zone. In the studies of bread shelf-life, an important role is carried out by the various packaging materials and technological solutions that exist. Traditionally, packaging materials had to be as inert as possible (this method is so-called passive packaging), and because of this bread was protected against the main causes of spoilage, namely the presence of oxygen and mold. Most recent, films made of synthetic polymers that have low gas permeability, coupled with the modification of the packaging headspace through decreasing oxygen levels below 0.1% and also the use of a new concept called active packaging that allows the packaging material to interact with the food products, thus improving the bread shelf-life drastically. The new concepts of active packaging and intelligent packaging, in which the new developed functional materials deliberately interact with bread in order to prolong or monitor the shelf life and the use of nanomaterials represent the top of innovation in this field. Technological aids such as natural antimicrobial compounds or sourdough utilization can be very useful tools used to improve bread quality and shelf life. Finding adequate bread packaging systems, in addition with technological interventions on formulation and breadmaking technologies, can increase significantly bread shelf life. This paper will review the literature for various state of the art packaging and technological solutions for bread shelf life and quality improving.

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Published in Scientific Bulletin. Series F. Biotechnologies, Vol. XXIII
Written by Rakesh TAWADARE, Devarajan THANGADURAI, Rayappa KHANDAGAVE, Jeyabalan SANGEETHA, Ramachandra PANDHARI

Sugarcane (Saccharum sp.) is one of the world’s most commercial and extensively grown crops. The breeding of sugarcane is keystone of all advanced sugarcane industries and everal research institutes. The success of sugarcane breeding program lies in the appropriate selection of genetically rich and diverse genotypes. Research rationale of resent study was to analyze genetic diversity among 24 promising flowering and non-flowering sugarcane cultivars. Molecular marker based screening was done with PCR analysis sing 10 SSR primers. SCM-32 primer showed highest polymorphic bands. The genetic similarity and UPGMA clustering were analyzed for all 24 sugarcane cultivars. The similarity ndex values for S19, S21, S22 and S23 suggested them as closest ones and S17 as the most distant one. UPGMA clustering based dendrogram showed that the correlation between accard coefficient and similarity index is high and significant. All 5 clusters showed a mixture of flowering and non-flowering cultivars, indicating that molecular marker can lay a potential role in sugarcane breeding programs than morphology based analysis.

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