Agriculture & Food Chemistry

Iramaia Angelica Neri-Numa has completed her PhD in Food Science at the University of Campinas. Currently, she is a Researcher at the Laboratory of Bioflavor and Bioactive Compounds at the University of Campinas. She involved in activities related to the bioprospection of secondary metabolites belonging to the Brazilian biodiversity of fruits as well as the biological role of the phenolic compounds, carotenoids, iridoids and prebiotics. She is a member of the project COBRA: A novel compound discovery pipeline for rapid and cost-effective identification of bioactives with health benefits from Brazilian crops, being conducted in a strong international cooperation with the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), the Univeristy of Copenhagen (UoC), the Technical University of Denmark and the Ultrapan (Brazil). She also has some relevant works published in reputed journals and book chapters.

Brazil is one of the world’s mega-diverse countries respresenting 20% of the world’s flora. Among the six Brazilian biomes stand out the Amazon rain forest, Cerrado and Atlantic forest which provides a large variety of native species with unique sensory characteristics and a great nutritional, functional and economic potential comparable to the temperate climate fruits. They constitute an important innovation domain for the food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, due to their wide variety of secondary metabolites and positive health effects as well as the market potential. This lecture mention the panorama of the Brazilian fruticulture and some results of the screening of some native Brazilian fruits as novel sources of compounds of interest, such as antioxidant, antiproliferative and anti-inflammatory activities as well as inibition of apoptosis and toxicity.