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The aim of the present research was to study the effect of convective drying on color, bioactive compounds, and antioxidant activity of berry fruits and to chemically characterize the polyphenolic composition of raspberry, boysenberry, redcurrants, and blackcurrants fruit. Drying berries at 65 °C provoked the best conservations of color, particularly for boysenberry and blackcurrant. Drying at 65 °C was also the condition that showed higher level of polyphenols, while drying at 50 or 130 °C showed above % degradation of them due to the long time or high temperature drying. Radical scavenging activity was the predominant antioxidant mechanism in all samples, with 65 °C dried berries being the most active ones possibly because of polyphenol depolymerization. The anthocyanin profile showed that delphinidin and cyanidin derivatives were the most abundant anthocyanidins with different predominance between berry genera. Degradation of anthocyanins was increased with drying temperature been Cy 3-glucoside and Cy 3-rutinoside the most abundant.

Byproducts generated from food industries, such as olive oil mills, have been studied to decrease harmful pollution and their environmental consequences. In this work, a new thermal pretreatment and saprobic fungal incubation to detoxify alperujo (two-phase olive mill waste) have been evaluated in view of its use as fertilizer in agriculture. The sequential use of both methods simplifies the thermal conditions and incubation times of the fungal treatment. Optimization of the thermal treatment from 150 to 170 °C for 45 and 15 min, respectively, reduced the incubation time with Coriolpsis rigida from 20 to 10 weeks needed to reduce phytotoxic effects on tomato plants. Therefore, the combination of thermal and biological treatments will allow the development of the potential benefits of alperujo to improve nutrients in agricultural soil.

The potential use for agronomic purposes of dry olive-mill residue (DOR), solid waste from the olive oil two-phase extraction process, might be impaired by its phytotoxicity. Although fungal treatments can detoxify DOR, long times are required for these processes. The objective of this study was to assess whether the addition of immobilized fungal inocula to DOR might improve colonization rates, thus reducing the time necessary for its detoxification and bioconversion. Inocula of Panus tigrinus CBS 577.79 and Phlebia sp. DABAC 9 immobilized on either chopped maize stalks or polyurethane sponge (PS) led to higher removals of both phenols and phytotoxicity from DOR than free inocula after 4 weeks of incubation. Best dephenolization (85%) was with PS-immobilized Phlebia sp., the use of which reduced germinability inhibition of Lepidium sativum and Lactuca sativa by 80 and 71.4%, respectively. Regardless of the type of inoculant, a low degree of humification was obtained.

The dry olive residue (DOR) obtained from the olive oil extraction process has toxic components against plants and microorganism growth, particularly monomeric phenols. In this investigation nine saprobic fungi were found to be capable of completely removing these phenols from the solid after 20 weeks of growth, although the rate depended on the type of fungi and phenol. Results showed that most of the fungi tested first eliminated o-diphenols and then non-o-diphenols. However, some fungi did not follow this trend. Phanerochaete chrysosporium first removed hydroxytyrosol and tyrosol and later their glucosides and, in contrast, Paecylomyces farinosus hydrolyzed hydroxytyrosol and tyrosol glucosides at the first stage, 2 weeks of growth, and then eliminated all monomeric phenols. The behavior of this fungus seems of great interest for recovering phenolic antioxidants from the DOR. Similarly, differences in DOR decolorization capacity among the fungi tested were also observed. Coriolopsis rigida showed the highest capacity, followed by Phebia radiata, Pycnoporus cinnabarinus, and Pha. chrysosporium. Therefore, both decolorization and monomeric phenol elimination pointed out that saprobic fungi could be used to detoxify the DOR obtained from the two-phase system of the olive oil extraction process.