To meet consumers’ demand for natural foods, edible oil producers and food processing industries are searching for alternatives to synthetic antioxidants to protect oils against oxidation. Antioxidant compounds extracted from different plant parts (e.g., flowers, leaves, roots, and seeds) or sourced from agri-food industries, including residues left after food processing, attract consumers for their health properties and natural origins. This review, starting from a literature research analysis, highlights the role of natural antioxidants in the protection of edible oils against oxidation, with an emphasis on the emerging and sustainable strategies to preserve oils against oxidative damage. Sustainability and health are the main concerns of food processing industries. In this context, the aim of this review is to highlight the emerging strategies for the enrichment of edible oils with biomolecules or extracts recovered from plant sources. The use of extracts obtained from vegetable wastes and by-products and the blending with oils extracted from various oil-bearing seeds is also pointed out as a sustainable approach. The safety concerns linked to the use of natural antioxidants for human health are also discussed. This review, using a multidisciplinary approach, provides an updated overview of the chemical, technological, sustainability, and safety aspects linked to oil protection.

The changes in the state of the climate have a high impact on perennial fruit crops thus threatening food availability. Indeed, climatic factors affect several plant aspects, such as phenological stages, physiological processes, disease-pest frequency, yield, and qualitative composition of the plant tissues and derived products. To mitigate the effects of climatic parameters variability, plants implement several strategies of defense, by changing phenological trends, altering physiology, increasing carbon sequestration, and metabolites synthesis. This review was divided into two sections. The first provides data on climate change in the last years and a general consideration on their impact, mitigation, and resilience in the production of food crops. The second section reviews the consequences of climate change on the industry of two woody fruit crops models (evergreen and deciduous trees). The research focused on, citrus, olive, and loquat as evergreen trees examples; while grape, apple, pear, cherry, apricot, almond, peach, kiwi, fig, and persimmon as deciduous species. Perennial fruit crops originated by a complex of decisions valuable in a long period and involving economic and technical problems that farmers may quickly change in the case of annual crops. However, the low flexibility of woody crops is balanced by resilience in the long-life cycle.

The leaves and berries of myrtle (Myrtus communis L.) are rich in phenolic compounds, such as phenolic acids, flavonoids, and flavanols. The richness of these antioxidant compounds allows the potential use of myrtle biomasses as raw materials for medicinal and functional food products. Most of the phenolic compounds originate from the phenylpropanoid pathway, where phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL) enzyme activates the first step. The objective of this research is to study the activity of PAL as related to accumulation in the myrtle fruits and leaves of some phenolic compounds in the period between blossom and full berry ripening. With this aim, we compared two model genotypes with different fruit coloration. In leaves and berries of two cultivars, ‘Giovanna’ with pigmented berries and ‘Grazia’ with white berries, the PAL activity and content of polyphenols, anthocyanins, flavonoids, and tannins were determined with spectrophotometric methods. PAL activity was quite constant in leaves and variable in berries: Greater in berries of ‘Giovanna’ than in those of ‘Grazia’ cultivar, and increasing from berry color-break to full ripening. In berries, a positive correlation between PAL and flavonoids (r = 0.44), and between PAL and anthocyanins (r = 0.69), as well as a negative correlation between PAL and total polyphenols (r = −0.471), were found.

Most of the biological properties of myrtle (Myrtus communis L.) are linked to the antioxidant activity of the phenolic compounds present in the extracts. In this study, the content of total phenols, tannins, and anthocyanins of acidified ethanol extracts of berries and leaves of five myrtle cultivars was quantified during the whole fruit development. In some development stages, the antioxidant activity (AA) of both tissues was evaluated with FRAP, ABTS, DPPH, β-carotene assays, and spectroscopic method (EPR). The trend of AA in leaf and berry extracts was different among genotypes and evaluation assays. In general, leaves showed with DPPH assay, the highest AA during autumn season, while with FRAP and β-carotene was higher at 120 DAF (days after flowering) corresponding to summer season. In berries, the AA with DPPH, ABTS, and EPR assays was the highest for all cultivars at 150 DAF and 210 DAF, while with β-carotene assay was higher in the first development stage. Both in leaf and berry, the total phenols and tannins contents influence the AA depending on the assay used, while the berries anthocyanins seem to play a minor role. The altitude of the site of origin differently affected the AA of myrtle leaf and berry. The study showed the potentiality to use the studied myrtle genotypes for further evaluation on biological applications of antioxidant activity.

Within the myrtle (Myrtus communis L.) species, different genotypes may produce dark-blue berries or white berries depending on the peel color upon ripening. One dark-blue cultivar and one white myrtle cultivar were used to study the molecular mechanisms underlying flavonoid biosynthesis. The relative expression levels of common (PAL, CHS, CHI, DFR and LDOX) and specific (FLS, ANR, LAR and UFGT) flavonoid genes were analyzed during fruit development by means of quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). Moreover, the anthocyanin content was determined, and it showed an increase with the ripening of the berries of the dark-blue cultivar. The results showed an increased transcript abundance of PAL, CHI, DFR, LDOX and UFGT gene expression in the dark-blue cultivar compared to the white one, as well as a strong positive correlation between the changes in gene expression and anthocyanin accumulation. The transcript levels of UFGT showed sharp increases at 150 and 180 days after full blooming (DAF) in the dark-blue cultivar, which corresponded with anthocyanin accumulation. However, ripening seemed to modulate the expression of genes implicated in flavonols (i.e., FLS) and flavan-3-ols (i.e., LAR and ANR) in different manners. However, whereas FLS transcript accumulation increased at the end of the ripening period in the dark-blue cultivar, LAR and ANR gene expression decreased in both cultivars.