Spontaneous fermentation is a process that depends on substrates' physical characteristics, crop variety, and postharvest practices; it induces variations in the metabolites that are responsible for the taste, aroma, and quality. Metabolomics makes it possible to detect key metabolites using chemometrics and makes it possible to establish patterns or identify biomarker behaviors under certain conditions at a given time. Therefore, sensitive and highly efficient analytical techniques allow for studying the metabolomic fingerprint changes during fermentation; which identify and quantify metabolites related to taste and aroma formation of an adequate processing time. This review shows that studying metabolomics in spontaneous fermentation permits the characterization of spontaneous fermentation in different stages. Also, it demonstrates the possibility of modulating the quality of cocoa by improving the spontaneous fermentation time (because of volatile aromatic compounds formation), thus standardizing the process to obtain attributes and quality that will later impact the chocolate quality.

In current systems, the fermentation spontaneous process produces fermented beans of heterogeneous quality due to the fermentation time. This study demonstrated that the fermentation time should be reduced. For this purpose, the physicochemical parameters, antioxidant profile, and volatile compounds were characterized in two types of fermentation (spontaneous and starter culture) for 168 h in cocoa from three altitude levels. Multivariate analysis (cluster and PCA) was used to discriminate the fermentation stages. We found three stages in all fermentations, where the first two stages (0 h to 96 h) were characterized by a higher antioxidant potential of the cocoa bean and the presence of desirable volatile compounds such as acids, alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, and esters, which are precursors of cocoa aroma; however, prolonged fermentation times affected the antioxidant profile of the bean. In addition, the use of a starter culture facilitates the release of compounds in a shorter time (especially alcohols and esters). It is concluded that it is necessary to reduce the fermentation time under these conditions in the region of Amazonas.

The process of drying food is necessary to preserve it; however, some bioactive compounds can be degraded during drying process. In this work, the convective drying process of Peruvian blackberry bagasse and the degradation of anthocyanins, total phenolic content (TPC), and antioxidant capacity (AC) were studied. The logarithmic model fitted well to the data and could predict the process, showing that 6 h of drying at 90 °C is enough to reach equilibrium moisture. Anthocyanin degradation followed a first-order kinetic model with reaction rate constant between 5.45 × 10⁻² ± 4.68 × 10⁻³ and 1.21 × 10⁻¹ ± 2.31 × 10⁻² h⁻¹, and activation energy of 25.11 kJ/mol. The highest retention (84.38%) of anthocyanins was obtained in 1 h at 50 °C and the highest degradation (68.54%) in 6 h at 90 °C. The TPC and AC increased with the drying time and temperature due to the increased water evaporation.

Technology forecasting (TF) based on bibliometric tools allows knowing the technological trends of developed topics based on experience and current knowledge, thus anticipating future changes. To reduce hunger and improve nutrition, the food-based topic is of central concern, especially functional food. Among these, various studies on chocolates have been performed. On a global scale, these products are at the level of patents, with China leading it, vastly outperforming the cocoa-producing countries. Though no known functional chocolates are sold under that specific name, chocolates on the market serve as "carriers" of bioactive compounds. Unfortunately, they cannot be attributed to health properties since these properties have to be evaluated with in vitro, in vivo, and clinical studies. Launching functional chocolate on the market is possible; however, it would be a long-term process involving previous stages such as studying its ingredients' bioactive properties, laboratory-level product development, functional properties, and quality and acceptance parameters. For research purposes, it is possible to speak of functional chocolates, potentially functional chocolates, or chocolates enriched with bioactive compounds since the development of research does not necessarily involve launching the product on the market.

Tropical fruits such as cherimoya, soursop, and pineapple share sugars (glucose, fructose, and sucrose) in common but may differ in the content of other phytochemicals. In the present work, confocal Raman spectroscopy and partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) were used to establish a classification model among the three fruits and to evaluate the effect of pre-processing methods on the model’s performance. The Raman spectra showed that glucose was present in the fruits in the 800–900 cm⁻¹ band and the 1100–1200 cm⁻¹ band. While sucrose was present in the bands of 1131.22 cm⁻¹, 1134.44 cm⁻¹, and 1133.37 cm⁻¹ in the three fruits, fructose was present in the bands of 1464.22 cm⁻¹, 1467.44 cm⁻¹, and 1464.22 cm⁻¹ in cherimoya, soursop, and pineapple. The accuracy of the PLS-DA model varied according to the pre-processing methods used. The Savitzky–Golay first derivative method produced a model with 98.69–100% and 100% precision on the training and prediction data, respectively.

The genus Cinchona belongs to the Rubiaceae family and comprises native Peruvian tree species distributed in tropical areas. It is currently endangered due to human disturbance and overexploitation for medicinal, forestry and food uses. To date, the current and future distribution of Cinchona spp. under the climate change scenario is unknown. Here, we modeled the present and future spatial distribution of the genus Cinchona using bioclimatic, edaphic and topographic variables using the maximum entropy algorithm (MaxEnt). The results indicate that 8.08% (103,547.89 km²) and 6.02% (77,163.81 km²) of the surface of Peru possesses areas with high and moderate distribution probabilities, respectively, to host the genus Cinchona, distributed mainly in the departments of Cusco, Amazonas, San Martín and Cajamarca. Furthermore, according to future climate scenarios, the areas of high suitability will increase their extension for the years 2050 and 2070 by 3.65% and 3.9%, respectively. Since Peru seeks to promote the forest sector to be the other force for its development, this study can be considered as a basis for the establishment of priority zones for the conservation, restoration, reforestation and sustainable management of Cinchona spp. species in Peru.