Donnelle Sandjong (Thesis began in 2021)

This thesis takes place in the Chinese-European project SAFFI (Safe Food for Infants in China and the EU, 2020-2024). This project aims at developing an integrated approach to enhance the identification, assessment, detection and mitigation of safety risks raised by microbial and chemical hazards all along EU and China infant food chains.

In the European SAFFI project, this PhD work focuses on chemical risks and more particularly on the risks associated with the generation of process-induced toxicants of furan family.

The main challenges of this PhD are:

- develop a robust and reliable analytical method for determining furan in specific food matrices.

- determine the fate (generation, degradation, migration) of furan along the food chain by taking as a case study three emblematic products of infant nutrition: small jars of fish and vegetables, infant cereals and fruit purees.

- acquire knowledge on the impact of processes and consumer household practices on furan formation, in particular to provide recommendations for consumers to use.

- propose rapid and inexpensive approaches, allowing monitoring of the generation of furan and / or its derivatives by manufacturers (auto control) by relying on the search for easily measurable markers identified by procedomics.

The PhD work benefits from the facilities of the MASS team for sample preparation, extraction and concentration, as well as the analytical park dedicated to the detection of contaminants and volatile compounds. The laboratory has different analytical systems: GC-GC-Quad / MS, GC × GC-ToF / MS and GC-Q-HRMS Orbitrap ® which allow the Donnelle to perform the measurements of furan in a food matrix and to implement the procedomics experiments.

As part of the SAFFI project coordinated by the MASS team of the QuaPA unit, this PhD work is performed in close collaboration with:

- IRTA (Institute of Recerca I Tecnologia Agroalimentaries, Spain) for the study of new innovative processes allowing to reduce process-induced toxicants in the infant products studied.

- the industrial partners of the project; HiPP (Germany), FrieslandCampina (Netherlands), Yiotis (Greece) for the study of the health quality of their infant foods.

This thesis is directed by Erwan Engel (MASS) and co-supervised by Maïa Meurillon (MASS).