Bridging Agriculture to Food Technology for Sustainable Bakery Products

With the final objective of proposing strategies to limit the impact of climate change on wheat quality, this PhD project is aimed at evaluating the effect of regenerative agriculture strategies (i.e. cover crops, minimum tillage, and precision fertilization) and technological approaches (i.e. improvers and/or processes), on the quality of flour and final bakery products. Prodotti da forno e sostenibilità: sinergia tra agricoltura e tecnologia alimentare Con l'obiettivo finale di proporre strategie per contrastare l'impatto del cambiamento climatico sulla qualità del frumento, questo progetto di dottorato è finalizzato a valutare l’effetto di alcune strategie di agricoltura rigenerativa (ovvero colture di copertura, minima lavorazione del terreno e concimazione di precisione) e di approcci tecnologici (come miglioratori e/o processi) sulla qualità della farina e dei prodotti da forno. 1. State-of-the-Art In the last decades, climate change has been threatening agriculture, limiting the sustainability of the system and affecting the quality of wheat and other crops. It is well known that changes in climate over time could be due to natural variability or to human activity, and cause rising temperatures, high concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and extreme events such as drought, heat waves, salinity stress, and changes in rainfall (Zahra et al., 2023). A possible solution to limit the problems caused by climate change could be the adoption of agronomic strategies belonging to regenerative agriculture. Indeed, regenerative agriculture could be defined as an approach to farming that uses soil conservation as the entry point and aims to enhance not only the environmental, but also the social and economic dimensions of sustainable food production (Schreefel et al., 2020). Since the main objectives of regenerative agriculture are restoration of soil health, increasing biodiversity, carbon sequestration, mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, and reduction in fertilizing input, practices like cover crops, minimum tillage, and precision fertilization seem to be promising solutions (Quintarelli et al., 2022; Liang et al., 2025; Diacono et al., 2013). Most scientific publications appear to focus on protein content and crop yield. On the other hand, currently, there are limited studies aimed at evaluating the effects of the aforementioned agronomic practices on the technological quality of wheat. For this reason, it seems necessary to further investigate the impact of these agronomic strategies on the technological quality of wheat flour, in terms of gluten aggregation properties, starch gelatinization and retrogradation, mixing properties, and aspects related to food safety and quality of final baked products. Moreover, since a deterioration in the quality of wheat cannot be excluded after the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices and given the need for companies to guarantee high quality standards, it becomes necessary to select improvers (e.g. enzymes, additives, ingredients) or (bio)technological processes (e.g. sprouting, fermentation, ozonation, high pressure process) to be applied to wheat flour (Tebben et al., 2018; Dapčević‑Hadnađev et al., 2022). Thus, this PhD thesis project will be focused on: 1) evaluating the impact of regenerative agriculture practices (cover crops, minimum tillage, and precision fertilization), proposed to mitigate climate change side effects, on the qualitative features of wheat flour and baked goods, 2) selecting flour improvers and/or processes to guarantee high and consistent quality of wheat flour and baked goods, in order to satisfy food industry demand and, 3) evaluating the effects of flour improvers and/or processes, identified as wheat flour enhancers, on qualitative features of wheat flour and baked goods.