The Tarlac State University (TSU) Food Technology and Research Center (FTRC) through the RDLead program of the Department of Science and Technology – National Research Council of the Philippines (DOST-NRCP) tapped the Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST), College of Agriculture and Food Science (CAFS) for a series of trainings headed by Dr. Dennis V. Cantre and aProf. Loraine B. Ancheta. The trainings were held last July 16, 22, and 23, 2021 which were attended more than 20 faculty and staff from different colleges of TSU lead by the director of FTRC, Dr. Lea B. Milan.
The Training started off with a lecture of aProf. Ancheta on the importance, principles, and protocols of fat and oils analysis, crude fat (Soxhlet method), free fatty acid, and peroxide value determination. The discussion was done on July 16, 2021 via Zoom. It was then followed by an actual on-site performance of the chemical analyses on the morning of the 22nd under the guidance of aProf. Ancheta.
On the afternoon of the 22nd, Dr. Cantre tackled the importance of shelf life and approaches on how to lengthen shelf life of food. That was then followed by a step-by-step demonstration of shelf life determination including accelerated shelf life testing wherein the participants were able to calculate the expiration dates of food using Microsoft Excel model fitting and the Excel solver tool.
On the last day of training, Dr. Cantre reinforced the participants’ concepts revolving thermal processing and the use of simulation software like ANSYS. The participants were also taught about the basic thermal processing steps and retorts used in the industry, as well as the emerging trends in thermal processing. That was followed by a demonstration of thermal processing using the newly acquired tabletop electric retort of the FTRC. It gave the participants an avenue to try their new equipment and process their canned fruit cocktail and corn soup.