REPORT on the 1° Year Research Activity Project @CNR ANTI-CoV

ANTI-CoV - enhAncement of Natural anTIviral Compounds in ready-to-eat Vegetables. Ready-To-Eat (RTE) salads can promote the intake of natural antivirals, such as quercetin, via their easy handling. However, salad flavonols are low because of solar UV deprivation under greenhouse cultivation. ANTI-CoV is aimed to increase quality of RTE vegetables by enhancing their flavonol content using short-term low-dosage postharvest UV LEDs treatments. Consumers could benefit from flavonol-rich RTE salads. Producers could deliver higher quality and more profitable products. Following the working plan presented in the project proposal, we employed the first period to the development of the experimental setup (WP1), consisting in the acquisition and installation of the irradiation UV LED panels. Preliminary studies were performed by using narrow-band UVB lamps.