A researcher at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (University
of Bologna) since the very beginning of 1991, Anna Badiani (graduated in Agricultural
Science) became an Associate professor in 1998, within the same
Faculty, selecting “Quality evaluation of animal foods” as her own
subject. She currently conducts her research and teaching activity at the
Department of Veterinary Medical Sciences. She gives her lectures within the 1st level
degree course in Aquaculture and seafood hygiene, the 2nd level
degree course in Safety and quality of animal foods, and two
Specialisation schools at the Faculty of Veterinary
Medicine. Anna Badiani is part of the Board of teachers
of the research doctorate in “Feed and Food Science” at the
University of Bologna.
Her research activities, which until now have been funded
mainly by the University of Bologna, the Italian Ministry of
Education, University and Research, and the Italian National
Research Council, recently expanded their scope to involve the
industrial world, although on a rather small scale.
After some research dedicated to carcass quality evaluation both
of pigs and horses, Prof. Badiani's interests centred around
nutritional, functional and sensory properties of muscle foods both
from terrestrial and aquatic animals. Special attention was devoted
to studying the compositional changes produced in muscle foods by
cooking, in terms of both speeding up of lipid oxidation, and
variations induced in true and apparent retention of macro- and
micro-nutrients (protein, lipids, fatty acids, cholesterol, macro-
and microelements, water-soluble vitamins, and purine bases).
Research into the macro- and micronutrient components of finfish
and shellfish are underway to combine these data in such a way so
as to "predict" the origin (senso latu) of any given
specimen. Further Prof. Badiani is currently engaged in studying
the evolution of Freshness Quality in several seafood species
through sensory and chemico-physical methods. QDA (Quantitative Descriptive Analysis) is the name of the technique she implemented in order to outline the sensory profile of several muscle foods, mainly seafoods. The scientific
production she has generated so far amounts to 131 works, 76 of
which are full-length papers.
Autumn 2020 marked a further turning point, in that a sort of quantum leap in the field of "applied research" occurred: in Cesenatico the "PRAS-pro.it project", id est, the "Resident Panel in Sensory Analysis of fish and fishery products", was born from scratch, an unprecedented initiative (not only at national level) to sensorially portray any fish food, of any nature.
Anna Badiani is an active member of the West European Fish
Technologists Association (WEFTA) and of the Italian Society of
Sensory Science (SISS). She was recruited to act as a
peer reviewer by journals of the "Food and Science Technology"
Area, such as: Journal of Food Composition and Analysis; Journal of
Food Engineering; Italian Journal of Animal Science; Journal of the
Science of Food and Agriculture; Meat Science; Journal of Aquatic
Food Product Technology; Aquaculture Research.
