Services supplied
ISPA is not set up to provide services to third parties in return for payment, but does on request make available free of charge to institutions at a national, regional and provincial level, as well as to local and national producers’ organisations and to individual producers in the agri-food sector, its skills and its innovative materials, in order to enhance the quality and safety of foodstuffs. These include analysing mycotoxins in various agri-food products; supplying typical cultures of micro-organisms; acquiring innovative protocols for analysing, preserving and processing agri-food products; visits to experimental farms and to demonstration catalogue plots with horticultural plants and fruit trees.
ISPA is not set up to provide services to third parties in return for payment, but does on request make available free of charge to institutions at a national, regional and provincial level, as well as to local and national producers’ organisations and to individual producers in the agri-food sector, its skills and its innovative materials, in order to enhance the quality and safety of foodstuffs. These include analysing mycotoxins in various agri-food products; supplying typical cultures of micro-organisms; acquiring innovative protocols for analysing, preserving and processing agri-food products; visits to experimental farms and to demonstration catalogue plots with horticultural plants and fruit trees. (http://noria.ba.cnr.it).
La Sezione di Sassari dispone di un campo sperimentale di circa dodici ettari che accoglie una vasta collezione di varietà autoctone delle principali specie fruttifere dell’area mediterranea. Il campo sperimentale, che rappresenta un insostituibile patrimonio del germoplasma frutticolo autoctono, è aperto a tutti gli operatori del settore, quali costitutori e miglioratori di cultivar, vivaisti, frutticoltori, centrali ortofrutticole, i quali possono anche ottenere materiale di propagazione, nonché informazioni agronomiche, tecnologiche e commerciali sulle diverse cultivar rappresentate.
The Bari section has a collection of over 5000 typical cultures of fungi of phytopathological, mycotoxicological and agri-food interest, especially in the genera Aspergillus, Fusarium and Alternaria, as a biodiversity pool of toxigenic fungi which could be used for biotechnological applications (www.ispa.cnr.it/Collection). There is also a collection of lactic acid bacteria cultures, isolated from typical Southern Italian products of various types and origins, which can be used as fermentation starters.
The Milan section has a wide-ranging collection of various freeze-dried bacteria (lactic acid bacteria, enterococci, propionic acid bacteria, clostrids, micro-staphylococci, yeasts and assorted potentially pathogenic strains). They are the fruit of over thirty years of painstaking activity in the sector and have been isolated and typified from milk and cheese samples of various types and origins.
The Lecce section has a large collection of freeze-dried cultures of lactic acid nacteria and yeasts, isolated from the dairy products and vine crops of typical Salento peninsula produce. The cultures, which have been characterised from a phenotypic, biochemical and technological point of view, are available to scientific institutions and other operators in the sector for demonstrations and biotechnological applications.
The Analytical chemistry group based in Bari can provide analytical tools and innovative protocols for the chemical and immunometric analysis of the main mycotoxins (aflatoxins, ochratoxins, fumonisins, trichothecenes, Alternaria toxins, patulin). Some of these analytical methods have been adopted as official methods by international bodies whose purpose is to check for mycotoxins in food products.
The Milan section has a well-equipped radioisotope laboratory where controls are carried out into radioactive contamination in foods (using liquid scintillation and gamma spectrometry) and research into identifying radiated foods (by luminometry).
The Turin section has a number of application protocols for storing forage, that can be made available to technical staff and operators from the associations of livestock producers and farmers. The Section also issues protocols for simple analytical determination of the composition of whole fish bodies and for extracting and measuring the fatty acid content of vegetable products using gas chromatography.
As part of the activities carried out to improve traditional dairy prodution, the Milan section promotes and sustains the publication of the DOP production discipline for typical local cheeses, as requested by the Institution and Consortia for the protection of typical cheeses.
