Drying of foods is an ancient practice that has been adopted to preserve foods beyond their natural shelf life. The process started with the exposure of foods to the sun, to extract from them a great proportion of the water, thus contributing for their conservation. The traditional solar dying with direct exposure to the sun had many disadvantages and presently more modern methods are used, such as hot air drying, spray drying, lyophilization, infrared, microwave or radiofrequency drying, osmotic dehydration or many combined processes.Many foods can be preserved through drying, but their organoleptic and nutritional properties are greatly altered as compared to the fresh counterparts. The objective of this paper is to describe the contents of a plenary speech presentation about the advances in drying methods and the effects of drying on the attributes of the dried foods. For that a search in the scientific literature was conducted and the selection of the information was based on the topics aimed at discussing.

 -Artificial neural networks (ANN) aim to solve problems of artificial intelligence, by building a system with links that simulate the human brain. This approach includes the learning process by trial and error. The ANN is a system of neurons connected by synaptic connections and divided into incoming neurons, which receive stimulus from the external environment, internal or hidden neurons and output neurons, that communicate with the outside of the system. The ANNs present many advantages, such as good adaptability characteristics, possibility of generalization and high noise tolerance, among others. Neural networks have been successfully used in various areas, for example, business, finance, medicine, and industry, mainly in problems of classification, prediction, pattern recognition and control. In the food industry, food processing, food engineering, food properties or quality control, statistical tools are frequently present, and ANNs can process more efficiently data comprising multiple input and output variables. The objective of this review was to highlight the application of ANN to food processing, and evaluate its range of use and adaptability to different food systems. For that a systematic review was undertaken from the scientific literature and the selection of the information was based on inclusion criteria defined. The results indicated that ANN is widely used for modelling and prediction in food systems, showing good accuracy and applicability to a wide range of situations and processes in food engineering.

Hazel (Corylus avellana L.) nutshell is one of the most consumed and most appreciated nut fruit all over the world. It is believed to have constituted a basic food in early prehistory, in temperate zones of the globe, such as for example Europe. Presently the hazelnut production is mainly concentrated on the Black Sea coast of Turkey, but other countries are also important producers, like for example Portugal, situated on the western Europe, in the Iberian Peninsula. The objective of this work is to make a review about the worldwide importance of hazelnut, their usages, including gastronomic and industrial applications, as well as some ways that allow adding value to this fruit, making it an even more valuable resource. The advantages include higher income for produces, lower environmental impacts and valorisation of residues improving sustainability and providing valuable products for consumers and/or ingredients to incorporate into those products.

Portugal is situated in the Iberian Peninsula, having climacteric influences of the Atlantic Ocean together with the Mediterranean Sea, which, allied to the landscape and fertile soil results in good pastures that potentiate the animal production. Hence, Portugal is very rich in what concerns traditional cheeses, made with cow, goat, sheep or mixture milks, and which are characterized by very particular tastes, colours and consistencies, besides being also different in terms of chemical composition. The number of Portuguese traditional cheeses is very high, although only a part of them have already been registered under the European Union designations for protection of origin. These have different processing technologies and are characterized by singular aspects that differentiate among them. In this way, they can be classified in terms of the type of milk used for its production, or in terms of the fat content, or even the type and intensity of ripening or finally according to the consistency of the paste. Traditional cheeses are very important in social terms, because they accumulate the history of a people and a country, besides providing a means of income for the rural populations that live from the pastures and the cheese manufacture. Cheeses comprise nutritional properties for being a good source of proteins, lipids, minerals (such as calcium, phosphorus and zinc) and vitamins (like vitamin A, riboflavin, folic acid and vitamin B12). Nevertheless, when it comes to traditional cheeses, they have to be consumed with moderation due to the high fat content present because they are usually made with whole milk.

This work evaluates the effect of freezing and storage time in ewe´s cheese. Eweś cheeses were subject to two different conservation conditions: frozen at -60C, with storage at -18C (Frozen), and refrigeration at 7C, with a RH (relative humidity) of 47% (Control). The initial values of moisture and water activity (a w ) were high and similar between the analysed samples, 62.2-61.3% and 0.91-0.92 respectively, with a decrease of moisture during the storage, being lower in the Frozen sample. The cheeses presented a light colour (L* = 69.0 and 74.6), which decreased during storage. The a* and b* coordinates showed negative and positive values, respectively, meaning that the predominant colours were green and yellow, and generally during storage they diminished. The texture of cheeses, in the first day of storage, presented similar values for Control and Frozen cheeses: 9.8 and 9.9 N for crust firmness; 3.6 and 3.9 N for flesh firmness; -2.6 and -2.8 N for stickiness; -22.7 and 24.7 N.sec for adhesiveness. Finally, after 120 days of storage for these cheeses, the crust firmness, the stickiness and the adhesiveness decreased more about three times. 