Significant advances in winemaking equipment and processes, as well as a deeper understanding of the role of yeast, have significantly improved wine quality throughout history. This paper examines critical aspects related to the use of commercial wine yeast starter cultures in the fermentation of grape and fruit wines, with a focus on berry wines and blackberry wine, which is the most predominant berry wine in Croatia. While the production of grape wines remains the most significant, fruit wines are gaining importance due to their composition, which contains a variety of bioactive compounds. Although spontaneous fermentation is still preferred by some winemakers, controlled or inoculated fermentation, based on the use of wine yeast starter cultures, is predominantly employed in modern winemaking. The selection of suitable yeast strains for grape wines is easier than for fruit wines, as the broader availability of commercial yeasts for grape wines contrasts with the limited selection offered for fruit wine production due to the smaller fruit wine market. The selection of Saccharomyces and, more recently, non-Saccharomyces yeast strains with desirable characteristics are crucial for the production of high-quality wines. Selection criteria for wine yeasts have evolved to meet modern consumer preferences and focus on technological properties, secondary flavor development and health effects.

Analizirani uzorci vina sorte Rajnski rizling iz vinogorja Plešivica-Okić proizvedeni su tijekom tri uzastopne godine (2009., 2010. i 2011.) na jednom obiteljskom gospodarstvu. Koncentracije alkohola, ukupnih i hlapljivih kiselina, ukupnog SO2 , glicerola i reducirajučih šećera u analiziranim vinima u skladu su sa zakonskim propisima. Uočen je izražen utjecaj klimatskih uvjeta na kemijski sastav analiziranih vina.

Agaricus bisporus, also known as the white button mushroom or champignon, is the most cultivated mushroom species worldwide. In addition to its favorable nutrient profile, it contains a number of compounds with antioxidant, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antitumor, and immunomodulatory activities. Waste biomass is a secondary product obtained from A. bisporus during the harvesting stage. It is underused, although it could be a cheap source of polysaccharides and antioxidants for use in food and feed production, or a source of nutraceuticals and cosmeceuticals. In this study, waste biomass was used as raw material for extraction of crude polysaccharides. The mean amount of crude polysaccharides extracted was 106 g/kg dry weight debris-free mushroom waste biomass. The crude polysaccharides recovered contained 11.57% α-glucan and 16.37% β-glucan. Total carbohydrates composed 44.18%. No significant differences were found in the Fourier transform infrared spectra, which confirmed the presence of protein, α-glucan, and β-glucan in all samples; phenols were detected only in waste biomass and market-ready A. bisporus fruiting bodies. The total phenol content in methanol extracts of waste biomass and A. bisporus fruiting bodies was 6.16 and 11.25 mg gallic acid equivalents/g extract, respectively. Antioxidant capacities of methanol extracts from waste biomass, as determined by spectrophotometric techniques, were 22.67 μmol Trolox/g extract (ABTS radical scavenging), 51.77 μmol Fe2+/g extract (ferric-reducing antioxidant power), and 51.52% (DPPH radical scavenging). Although these values were lower than those for A. bisporus fruiting bodies, the waste biomass has great potential for use in food, feed, and other bioproducts of economic importance.

Healthcare communities have identified a significant need for disease-specific information. Disease-specific ontologies are useful in assisting the retrieval of disease-relevant information from various sources. However, building these ontologies is labor intensive. Our goal is to develop a system for an automated generation of disease-pertinent concepts from a popular knowledge resource for the building of disease-specific ontologies.A pipeline system was developed with an initial focus of generating disease-specific treatment vocabularies. It was comprised of the components of disease-specific citation retrieval, predication extraction, treatment predication extraction, treatment concept extraction, and relevance ranking. A semantic schema was developed to support the extraction of treatment predications and concepts. Four ranking approaches (i.e., occurrence, interest, degree centrality, and weighted degree centrality) were proposed to measure the relevance of treatment concepts to the disease of interest. We measured the performance of four ranks in terms of the mean precision at the top 100 concepts with five diseases, as well as the precision-recall curves against two reference vocabularies. The performance of the system was also compared to two baseline approaches.The pipeline system achieved a mean precision of 0.80 for the top 100 concepts with the ranking by interest. There were no significant different among the four ranks (p = 0.53). However, the pipeline-based system had significantly better performance than the two baselines.The pipeline system can be useful for an automated generation of disease-relevant treatment concepts from the biomedical literature.

β -glukani se u prirodi mogu naci u razlicitim prirodnim izvorima i velik broj istraživanja pokazao je njihove jake imunostimulacijske ucinke u razlicitim organizmima. β -glukani mogu naci primjenu u medicini i farmaciji, prehrambenoj, kozmetickoj i kemijskoj industriji, kao i u veterinarskoj medicini i proizvodnji krmiva. Iskoristeni pivski kvasac, dobiven pri proizvodnji piva kao sekundarni proizvod, može se koristiti kao sirovina za izdvajanje β -glukana. Unatoc cinjenici da se velike kolicine pivskog kvasca koriste kao krmivo, određene kolicine se jos uvijek tretiraju kao tekuci otpad. β -Glukan je jedna od komponenata koja može postici vecu komercijalnu vrijednost nego sam pivski kvasac te tako može maksimalizirati ukupnu profitabilnost procesa proizvodnje piva. Stoga proizvodnja β -glukana, kao i drugih visokovrijednih proizvoda baziranih na β -glukanu, iz iskoristenog pivskog kvasca predstavlja isplativ tehnoloski i ekonomski izbor za pivovare.

Since the last decade of the 20th century, there has been rising interest in the production of fruit wines, as evidenced by the high number of published papers and books covering this matter. When aiming to produce quality fruit wines, it is essential to evaluate the analytical parameters of the beverage. In this context, there are a large number of analyses for the evaluation of wines and fruit wines. This article characterizes the fruit wines made from different fruits using selected parameters (BAs, metals, sulfates, phosphates) by the use of a traditional chemometric technique – hierarchical cluster analysis. To determine the organic compounds, an in situ derivatization coupled with dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) was used. The spectroscopy techniques such as flame photometers, AAS and GF-AAS were applied to determine the selected metals content. Wine made from grapes coming from Polish Vineyard (ANNA de Croy) were also analysed to compare the obtained results. The classification offered allows the identification of unknown wine samples with similar origin to be ordered in some of the patterns formed.

Summary Nowadays, the world hop industry is faced with one of the biggest crisis in the history. Permanent decrease of hopping rates in the world beer industry during last 20 years caused many problems to hop producers all around the world. It resulted in the huge surpluses of hop stocks between years 2008 and 2010, the ages known as “years of famine” for hop farmers. Th e hop contains some compounds having medical, pharmaceutical or biological activities, and xanthohumol is one of them. Xanthohumol is a biofl avonoid whose positive eff ect is confi rmed both in vitro and in vivo experiments. It is successfully used in medical treatment of patients having diseases such as prostate and breasts cancer, osteoporosis, menopausal problems, and even HIV. However, such attributes of hop are strong argument to consider the restructuring of the world hop industry and forming a new supply chain, primarily oriented to the pharmaceutical industry.

INTRODUCTION: Although blackberry wine is a popular fruit wine and traditional product in the continental part of Croatia, the scientific literature on Croatian blackberry wines is scarce and there is no data concerning characterization of wine yeasts for blackberry wine production. In this work, two commercial yeasts were tested in a small scale to evaluate their application possibility in commercial production of blackberry wine. The wines produced using Fermol Rouge and Fermol Mediterranee yeasts were designated as FR wine and FM wine, respectively. METHODS AND MATERIALS: Microfermentations of blackberry juice were performed at 23oC to test the fermentative abilities of commercial yeasts in a small scale. Fermentation activity was monitored by measuring CO2 evolution and CO2 production rate. Reducing sugars, alcoholic strength by volume, pH, total and volatile acidity, glycerol as well as malic and lactic acid of blackberry wines were estimated based on procedure described by OIV. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: It was shown that Fermol Mediterranee yeast started fermentation faster compared to Fermol Rouge yeast. Level of volatile acids formed by Fermol Mediterranee yeast was slightly lower than that obtained by Fermol Rouge yeast, while concentrations of residual sugars, ethanol, pH and total acids were similar in wines produced using both yeasts. Glycerol production by both yeasts was nearly the same. Compared to FM wine malic acid level in FR wine was twice lower, while lactic acid concentration was twice higher in FR wine. Chemical composition of the produced wines was in accordance with the Croatian fruit wine legislation. Good fermentative properties of commercial yeasts Fermol Mediterranee and Fermol Rouge could be beneficial for blackberry wine production.

Particulate β-glucans were isolated from brewer’s yeast using three different procedures - alkaline (A), alkaline-acidic (AA) and alkaline-acidic with mannoprotein removal (AAM) and dried using three different methods - air drying (AD), lyophilization (L) and spray drying (SD). In this work, the obtained β-glucan preparations were tested for their microstructure, rheological properties, swelling, water-holding and oil-binding capacities. According to their rheological properties, suspensions containing 1 and 2 % (w/w) of spray-dried samples belong to the category of dilatant fluids. Among spray-dried samples, rheological behavior and water-holding capacity of preparation AA-SD differed from those obtained by other two procedures (A-SD and AAM-SD). Concerning different drying methods applied, swelling was the lowest in lyophilized samples and the most pronounced in air-dried ones. Oil-binding capacity was the highest in lyophilized preparations and increased proportionally to the number of processing steps applied in isolation procedure.

Morphogenesis, volume and number of hop (Humulus lupulus L.) glandular trichomes, and their influence on alpha-acid accumulation in fresh bracts of hop cones The ESEM investigations revealed the morphogenesis of peltate glandular trichomes, which was divided into five phases. In phase one, new peltate glandular trichomes were initiated; in phase two, they were differentiated; in phase three trichomes grew vigorously; in phase four they were determined; in the fifth and final phase they came to maturity. Volume of glandular trichome during the different phases of morphogenesis varied from 0.25 × 10-2 mm3 in phase 1, to 1.95 × 10-2 mm3 in phase 5. More glandular trichomes are placed on the base of the adaxial side of bracts (average 7 mm-2) than on the base of abaxial side (average 5.8 mm-2). In this research, positive Spearman's rank order correlations were found between the average number of glandular trichomes and content of α-acids as well as between the average volume of glandular trichomes and content of α-acids.

Hmeljne alfa- in beta-kisline so sekundarni metaboliti hmelja, katerih uporaba in funkcija je poznana predvsem v pivovarstvu in v povezavi z alfa-kislinami. Ceprav dosedanje raziskave dokazujejo, da uporaba hmelja nima vecjega vpliva na povecanje proizvodnje in kvaliteto mleka, je bilo na zacetku tega stoletja ugotovljeno, da imajo hmeljne kisline antibioticni ucinek, oz. da zmanjsujejo populacijo gram pozitivnih bakterij in praživali v prebavnem traktu prežvekovalcev. Znano je, da v primeru vecjega stevila gram pozitivnih bakterij v prehrani živali in/ali na pasnikih prihaja do zmanjsevanja izkoristljivosti krmil in celo do obolelosti živali. Najpogostejsa terapija v taksnem primeru je uporaba antibiotikov iz razreda ionofornih antibiotikov. Hmeljne kisline imajo zaradi svoje specificne kemijske strukture enak ucinek kot ionoforni antibiotiki in hmeljni peleti, ki se lahko dodajajo celo preventivno v koncentrirana krmila. Poleg neposrednega ucinka na zmanjsanje populacije gram-pozitivnih bakterij se zmanjsuje tudi emisija metana iz živalskih iztrebkov. Uporaba hmelja v prehrani prežvekovalcev ima tudi ekonomski vpliv iz vidika ekolosko proizvedenega mleka ; celo vec, zaradi prepovedi uporabe antibiotskih stimulatorjev rasti se danes intenzivno proucujejo alternativne snovi (probiotiki, prebiotiki in imunomodulatorji) kot dodatki v prehrani, ki bi lahko nadomestili uporabo antibiotikov. Zaradi velikih tržnih viskov hmelja na svetovnem trgu so danes hmelj in hmeljni peleti dostopnejsi kot kadarkoli prej.

The results of this study show that the most usual damages of hop glandular trichomes are obtained on tunica of peltate glandular trichomes as well as cracking of bulbous glandular trichomes. In fresh hop cones any sorts of damage of glandular trichomes are obtained, on the other hand frequency of damaged hop glandular trichomes increase after drying (f(i) = 0.08) and after pelletization of hop cones the structure of glandular trichomes is completely destroyed. Volume of hop glandular trichomes of dried hop cones is significantly smaller in the comparison with volume of glandular trichomes of fresh hop cones (D=0.544x10(-2) mm(3); P<0.01) and a phenomenon of shrinkage on tunica surface of peltate glandular trichomes of dried hop cones is also visible in comparison with the fresh one. The decrease in volume of hop glandular trichomes in dried hop cones is the result of dehydration of hop cones and consequently hops glandular trichomes during the drying process which cause shrinkage of peltate glandular trichomes. However, after pelletization the structure of hop glandular trichomes is completely destroyed.