For those of you going to Natural Products Expo West 2024 in Anaheim, CA, four UC Davis Food Science and Technology faculty members (Drs. Alyson Mitchell, Jean-Xavier Guinard, Nitin Nitin, and Luxin Wang) will be speaking at a panel on Tuesday, March 12th, from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm PDT. 

UC Davis Education in Partnership with SCIFTS
Event page 
Map of Anaheim Marriott Ballroom E 
Badge Registration and pricing 
*The UC Davis Education Series is included with your Exhibit Hall Badge.

Agenda
Understanding the Flavor & Quality of Honey

• Dr. Alyson E. Mitchell, University of California Davis

Specialty Coffee Sensory & Consumer Science – A Virtual Cup of Coffee from the UC Davis Coffee Center

• Jean-Xavier Guinard, University of California Davis

This presentation will provide an overview of the sensory and consumer research conducted at the UC Davis Coffee Center and how it is serving the specialty coffee community of farmers, traders, roasters, baristas and consumers. This session will introduce the now iconic and ubiquitous Coffee Taster’s Flavor Wheel (Spencer et al., 2016) – a tool that provides the means to describe the many flavors of coffee. Qualitative consumer research into consumers’ coffee brewing habits combined netnography (online observation) and means end chain analysis (a laddering interview technique) accessed perceived attributes for each brewing method, the consequences of those attributes, and the consumers’ personal values they connect to.

Food By-Products To Enhance the Functionality of Probiotics

• Nitin Nitin, University of California Davis

Improving stability, delivery, and persistence of probiotics in the gut are essential for achieving the gut health benefits associated with beneficial bacteria and their metabolites. Despite significant progress, the delivery and persistence of probiotics in the gut are sub-optimal. This research evaluated the development and application of novel food-grade approaches using spent plant-based biomaterials and by-product extracts for enhancing probiotics' stability, delivery, and persistence. The results demonstrated that plant-derived in-soluble materials combined with a vacuum-enabled infusion of probiotic cells could form food-grade solutions to deliver and enhance the persistence of probiotics.

Ensuring the Microbial Safety & Quality of Food

• Luxin Wang, University of California Davis

Microorganisms contribute significantly to food preparation, preservation, flavor development, and nutrition. Unfortunately, the present of a small group of microorganisms, namely pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms, can lead to serious public health and food loss concerns. In this talk, the presence and fitness of pathogenic microorganisms in food and food systems will be reviewed and emerging control strategies to mitigate the microbial food safety and quality challenges will be discussed.