In the present study, carotenoids were recovered from processing sweet corn by-products (SCB). The total carotenoid content determined in the SCB extract was 1.19 mg/100 g DW, and the principal carotenoids identified by the HPLC technique were zeaxanthin, β-cryptoxanthin and lutein. Freeze- and spray-drying techniques were applied for the encapsulation of SCB extract; for this purpose, four different wall materials were used: two proteins (soy and pea) and two carbohydrates (maltodextrin and inulin). The physicochemical characteristics of eight encapsulates were determined to assess their stability. The obtained results indicate that, by using the freeze-drying method, better water activity, moisture content as well as encapsulation efficiency were achieved. Spray-drying resulted in better flowing properties. All obtained encapsulates were microbiologically safe for food applications due to the fact that the obtained results are in agreement with the requirements for consumer safety, i.e., for further food applications and scale-up processes. Chemometric classification and ranking techniques were applied to observe potential grouping among the investigated encapsulates and to select the most favorable encapsulates regarding the used wall materials and encapsulation techniques for the assessment of sustainability in food products. The most suitable wall material and encapsulation technique for the assessment of sustainability in food products was produced by freeze-drying pea protein as a wall material (FDP).

The contamination of the environment by pesticides is becoming a burning issue in many countries in the World. Development, design, and synthesis of new eco-friendly pesticides and modification of existing ones in order to improve their efficacy with the lowest impact on the environment are two main future possibilities in crop protection and the provision of sufficient food for the growing world population. The present study is focused on the comparative analysis of a series of eight symmetrical triazine derivatives, as potential herbicide candidates with acyclic (alkyl) and cyclic (cycloalkyl) substituents, in terms of their antifungal activity towards Aspergillus flavus as an opportunistic fungal pathogenic microorganism responsible for frequent contaminations of crops with aflatoxin, and in terms of their potential application as herbicides in maize, common wheat, barley, and rice crops. The applied methods include the chemometric pattern recognition method (hierarchical cluster analysis), experimental microbiological analysis of antifungal activity (agar well-diffusion method), and molecular docking of the triazines in the corresponding enzymes. The main findings of the conducted study indicate the significant antifungal activity of the studied triazine derivatives towards A. flavus, particularly the compounds with acyclic substituents; five out of eight studied triazines could be applied as systematic herbicides, while the other three triazines could be used as contact herbicides; the compounds with acyclic substituents could be more suitable for application for various crops protection than triazines with cyclic substituents.

Considerable attention has been paid to the analysis of chemicals in the s-triazine group, due to their widespread use in agricultural chemistry and their subsequent impact on biological systems. For initial chemical screening of the activity of newly synthesized compounds, it is recommended to determine their lipophilicity and physico-chemical property in relation to biological activity. Lipophilicity is difficult to quantify. The most widely accepted measure of lipophilicity is the octanol-water partition coefficient. Measurement of the octanol-water partition coefficients is achieved by an alternative method, i.e. reversed-phase liquid chromatography. Reversed-phase thin-layer chromatography (RP TLC) is a rapid method for the analysis of large number of s-triazine type compounds. Certain relationship between the structure of s-triazine compounds and their mobility on silica gel impregnated with paraffin oil have recently been demonstrated. The retention behavior of compounds in various chromatographic systems strongly depends on their physico-chemical properties. Recently, much effort was given in finding adequate mathematical model relating the retention of the given analyte to its physico-chemical and structural parameters (descriptors). These correlations are known as quantitative structure-retention relationships (QSRR), which offer a powerful tool for the prediction of separation behavior. The QSRR equations describing retention constants RM0, determined for different modifiers in mobile phase in terms of logarithms of n-octanol-water partition coefficients, were derived. The partition coefficients (AlogPs, AClogP, AB/logP, milogP, AlogP, MlogP, logPKowin, XlogP2, XlogP3, ACDlogP i ClogP) were calculated by application of different software packages. The goal of this paper was to select the logP data and TLC system that best characterize octanol/water partitioning and thus the lipophilicity of the investigated molecules.

Artificial neural network approach to modelling of metal contents in different types of chocolates

Triazine derivatives are well-known commercially available compounds used for selective weed control in different crops, such as corn and sugarcane. Some of them are considered persistent organic compounds in the environment and it is important to improve the features of herbicide formulae, to estimate their physicochemical properties and to determine their retention behavior in modern analytical techniques that can be used in the determination of pesticides in environmental samples. The present study deals with a comprehensive analysis of the chromatographic behavior of a series of 6-chloro-1,3,5-triazines with alkyl and cycloalkyl substituents, among which some compounds possess herbicidal and fungicidal activity. The anisotropic lipophilicity of triazine derivatives was determined using reversed-phase ultra high performance liquid chromatography with octadecyl and phenyl columns and applying binary (methanol/water and acetonitrile/water) and ternary (methanol/acetonitrile/water) mobile phases under isocratic conditions. The retention data were analyzed using chemometric pattern recognition methods (hierarchical cluster analysis and principal component analysis) and sum of ranking differences method. The obtained results are excellent indicators of the retention behavior and the lipophilicity of the analyzed series of triazines and can serve as an outstanding basis for the development of new chromatographic methods for the determination of triazines in environmental samples.