Almost Home

Looking around at breakfast you see tired faces and tired eyes. Some people are coughing, by now everyone has had a run-in with the PhD-trip bug, but all are happy. Although we had a very good last two weeks, people are glad to be going home again. 

Are road back to home is going to be one with a detour. First we take a coach to the airport in Vilnius (around 90 minutes). There we take the plane to Helsinki. In Helsinki we have to wait for about 3 hours before we can board our plane to Schiphol. In Vilnius we also say goodbye to Lena, Marta and Nicolas, who will spent an extra day there.

And in Helsinki is where I am writing this. I found a nice quiet space, not so difficult because all the Finns are glued to the big screens around the airport. You see, Finland is playing Russia in the semi-finals of the WC Icehockey. (Back home I learned that the Finns unfortunatly lost)

The last two weeks were really great. There were some bumps, but overall things went very smooth. The difference between the first and second week was very evident and very informative. In the first week we visited universities and institutes of a similar level us our work in Wageningen. In the second week it was a little more different, but for our PhD's it was a very educating experience. Things are not so difficult in Wageningen. When we need equipment, courses or other things we can usually procure them, in the Baltics that is much harder. Also the culture around science and the cooperation between science and industry is totally different and that fact is also a good thing to experience now and then. 

One of the biggest difference between our last trip (to the US) and this trip is the fact that we did more things and ate more often together as a group. And that made this much more a group trip and did a lot of good for the mood in the group. 

Outstanding moments for me were the medieval diner in Tallinn and the surprise birthday party for Remko.

Anyway, like I said we all had a nice and impressive two weeks in which we learned a lot about ourselves, our science and each other.

But it is also nice to be home.....

FoodBalt Day 2

Anja Warmerdam had the pleasure to write a report of the second and last day of the FoodBalt 2012 conference:

After a nice conference dinner with traditional Lithuanian music and a good night of sleep, I have the task today to write you a nice story on this blog. Today is the last official day of the trip and the last day of the FoodBalt conference: tomorrow we are leaving the Baltics. When we woke up, we immediately saw the weather was much better than yesterday: the sun was shining! The PhD trip committee arranged us a nice breakfast and then we made a short walk from the hostel to the conference.

Today it was ‘our’ turn to present our work in the conference. There was a special guest session arranged in the morning: “Food Science and Technology in the Netherlands”. Remko was chairing the session together with Audrius Pukalskas. Before some of us could present their work, Huub Lelieveld (GHI president), key note speaker of today told us about the possibilities of PEF (pulsed electric field) as a replacement of cooking. Instead of cooking foods for (in some cases) several hours, PEF can be used to pretreat foods in less than a second!

Huub Lelieveld

After this presentation, we had nice, interesting and lively presentations from Kashif, Yvette, Pascalle, Jimmy, Karolina, Nicolas and Marta. Marta was actually forgotten in the conference program, but Remko nicely made some space for her. While Marta (as the last speaker of the morning session and the last presenter in our complete tour) still had the microphone, she took the opportunity to thank professor Venskutonis for receiving us at the conference.

A bit later that we are used to, it was time for coffee and at the same time we had to present the posters that we brought. Most of our posters were placed in a small abandoned corridor where only a few people came: a pity.

The second session of the day was called: “Various aspects of food science and technology” and we heard several presentations about e.g. modeling of the cooling rate of freshly baked bread, stability of lycopene in (processed) tomato, and properties of whey protein films around strawberries and apples from people from Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland. Around 13.00h we had a nice warm meal: I think we (at least the Dutchies among us) ate the last two weeks much more warm food and less bread than we normally do. During the lunch break there was another opportunity to view and present the posters, but considering the interest and place of our posters we went outside and enjoyed the sun.

The third session of the day was called: “Various aspects of food chemistry and technology”. Lots of results about obesity, chervil, and  phenolic compounds were presented by people from Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Around 16.15h, presentations were finished and the conference was closed by professor Venskutonis. He handed out 188 certificates to all the participants and mentioned especially the group from Wageningen that was present.

 Overall, I think we can say that this conference was a special experience and that the main message of the day for us was that we are rather spoiled in Wageningen with all the equipment and possibilities that we have available.

Afterwards, everyone went his own way. Some went to the shopping centre, some went for a walk, some went running, and some just relaxed in the hostel room. Around 7pm we met again in a restaurant called ChilliPica. The dishes that we ate varied from pizza’s and pasta’s to chicken with French fries, and salads. The drinks didn’t vary that much: a few juices, some cokes, but mainly BEER. At least three taps with five liters of beer were ordered which resulted in very nice, for ‘stukjes’ usable pictures ;-). It was a nice celebration of a very successful PhD trip. Remko thanked the organizers Marta, Martin, Maurice, Nicolas, and Rianne for all their efforts and as a present they got a nice T-shirt and hat or shawl and flags from the Baltic States and Finland.

A very happy PhD trip committee

Tomorrow, we will hopefully have a good flight home without any active volcano’s on our way!

Best wishes,

Anja (W.)

FoodBalt Day 1

The last two days of the FPE PhDtrip were going to be spent at the FoodBalt conference in Kaunas. Ekaraj Paudel wrote a report of the first day and can be read here:

When I woke up this morning, a light rainfall was making Kaunas city wet. Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania, is final destination of our 14 day long PhD trip. Stunned by the beauty of Estonian and Latvian cities that we had visited before this city, I was wondering, is Kaunas equally beautiful?!

Today a lot of things were to be repeated. Sami would not forget to say “Ekaraj, my best friend; my food is your food” as he has been doing it from last few days. Nirmal, Kashif and Jue would keep reminding (a friendly tease!) me from time to time about availability of free wi-fi that I could use to use facebook. And, almost all of people (may be Remko and Jos will not?) would keep on repeating “no-no-no-no-no” for exactly five times whenever they have to say one single no. I wonder who started this at first?!  But the program of the day will be different as we are no more visiting universities and research centres like what we were doing from starting day of the trip, but attending a conference Foodbalt-2012.

Our bus driver Mr. Koit a smiling and outspoken guy with pleasant accent in English, was leaving today. On the way, he gave each of us a key-cord and also joined us in till the breakfast. Maurice also gifted him with some money that he collected among all of us.

We finished our breakfast at around 8:45 in the canteen of conference venue. Laura, Jorien and me passed the underground tunnel that links building where conference was organized to the next building where posters were to show. Then we came to know that our turn is only tomorrow. We should sometimes look at the program schedule a bit more carefully!! We finally stored the posters in a locker and Laura kept the key. Hope she will manage not to lose them till tomorrow!

Conference started exactly at 9:00 with an opening speech from rectorate representative. He also introduced history of FoodBalt conferences. The session was jointly chaired by Thierry Talaou and Rimantas Venskutonis.

There were two plenary lectures; one by Remko and another by Eugene Jansen. Remko highlighted on current and future food and fuel issues and sustainability. He also highlighted on how sustainability in food sector be improved with examples of corn milling, separation of wheat gluten and starch, meat analogues etc. 

Eugene Jansen presented on monitoring of nutritional components and anti-oxidant status in human serum.  

After first coffee break, the session “antioxidants and other bioactives” started at 11:45. The presentations were about antioxidant properties, anti-microbial properties, bioactive properties, phenolic compounds, antioxidant activity etc present in various plant materials and possibility of their exploitation. Six young scientists presented their work in this session. I felt the area of the work was a bit far from what we are doing in our group.

We had a nice time during the lunch break. Jimmy was trying hard to convince all of us that “your worst enemy is the one who is the most closest to you”. There was a rumor in air that Pascalla, after eating the delicious Latvian lunch, was so overpowered that she banged herself at least two times against a glass wall.

We visited the poster session, where enthusiastic young scientists were showing their work.

I found the afternoon session a bit more interesting. The afternoon session was about food technology and processing, the quality of food products. Six enthusiastic young scientists presented their work at this session. The presentations were about unit operations like carrot juice freezing, potato blanching, lactose crystallization, fat crystallization etc. with which our group is more familiar.

Most fun part of the day was evening dinner that the conference organizers had organized. Food was delicious but even more delicious was musical program. A group of musicians played music in a perfect pleasant rhythm and harmony out of wooden log, some metal rings and few other things that really looked pre-historic. Later, people cannot stop themselves and almost all were dancing in narrow space between chairs and table at which food was kept. Later on few audiences replaced the musicians. Sami, Laura, Jua and Jos were trying their best to be as good as the original musicians.

It was already dark when I came back to the hostel after visiting a river cross with Pascalle, Nicolas, Marta, Jue, Sami and Jaquelline. Today Nirmal and Kashif forget to remind me about availability of free wi-fi. Today was indeed different!!.

Ekaraj Paudel

17^th May 2012

Kaunas, Lithuania

Latvia University of Agriculture

And here is the second post of today. The first one can be found lower on this page.
The next report is written by Pacalle Pellegrom and she writes about our visit to the Latvia University of Agriculture in Jelgava, Latvia. There will be pictures with this post, but they will be posted later.



Wednesday 16th of May


This morning we woke up in the Riga hostel where at 7 o’clock breakfast was waiting for us. To improve integration, breakfast was served on one big table which made us feel like one big family. The bus driver joined us for a bit, but he had to leave early because he had to walk for half an hour to get to the bus. After driving for 45 minutes we arrived at the Latvia University of Agriculture in Jelgava. The university is housed in a former palace. The pictures can be used as an idea for our new building… The program started with an introduction of the Lativa University. To give you an idea: 606 students are in Food Technology. This study is subdivided in: Food Science, Catering and Hotel Entrepreneurship and Food Technology. Each year on average 4 PhD students graduate from the Food Science program. After this introduction Remko introduced Wageningen University. Compared to Wageningen, Food Technology seems to be more a female study here, since 18 people attended the introduction of which only two were men.
The morning session of presentations were all from Wageningen. Lena, Nicolas, Kevin and Anja gave a presentation. Laura was the last one and the only one who had not given a presentation before. Laura introduced her project and talked about the approach of characterizing barley.
Next on the program was a lab tour. In the packaging lab a GCMS is used for aroma analysis. On our way to the next lab, we already smelled the nice aroma of freshly baked bread. In this lab students were doing practicals. Another student practical lab is the milk and juices lab. Here we saw the same equipment as yesterday at the University of Tartu. A heat exchanger, a freeze dryer and a mixer were present. Another very basic lab for students is the microbiology lab. The last two labs were the natural substances lab and the water and food lab. In these labs analyses are done with spectrometers, liquid chromatography and a gas analyser.
After the lab tour we were taken to the cellar of the palace where we got a nice lunch served. The afternoon program consisted of presentations of PhDs and researchers of Latvia University. Ilona determined that the vitamin C and E content increased during germination of barley. However, the kilning steps that follow decreased the vitamin content. Karina found that during drying of cranberries the vitamin content and the polyphenol content decreased and that the bacterial activity decreased as well. Emils gave a presentation about lactic acid bacteria in rye bread. The next speaker, Aija, investigated the water, meat, fruit, vegetable and bread consumption in Latvia. The bread consumption in Latvia decreased over the last years, which made the speaker distribute rye bread to the audience. Fredijs gave a presentation on Liquid Chromatography analysis. The last presentation was given by Zanda. She concluded that freeze drying and microwave drying of dill retained more vitamin C and phenolic compounds than air drying.
The final item on the program was announced to be mystic... We got a tour through the museum of the palace, which included a visit to the coffins of the dukes that lived in the palace. The guide assured us that no ghosts were present near the coffins, the ghosts moved to the chemical lab..
At three o’clock the visit was finished and we took the bus to Kaunas. At the border of Lithuania the bus driver had to run through the heavy rain to pay the road taxes. The difference between the roads of Latvia and Lithuania was immediately clear, no holes in the roads and the maximum speed was 130 instead of 90km/h! Around 8 we arrived in Kaunas. The receptionist did not speak English, so we needed the bus driver to arrange the rooms. Later on we practised our “hints” skills to obtain a map and to arrange internet (Nirmal won). After settling in the hostel some of us went for dinner and took a good look at the Lithuanian supermarket, very interesting. After a nice cup of tea we took our rest to prepare for the FoodBalt conference.

Estonian University of Life Sciences

You are probably eagerly awaiting the new blogs, because it has been a while.
So without further ado, here is Sami Sahin's report of our visit to the Estonian University of Life Sciences in Tartu.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome on board. This is your captain speaking.. Today is May 15^th, we are already on the 10^th day of our PhD trip. Having had a nice sleep in a hostel in the small cute Estonian town, Tartu, we left for the visit to Estonian University of Life Sciences. I should say that for a nice sleep you do not need a nice hostel, you only need to be ‘nicely exhausted’.

On our way, as it has been repeating for the last four days, Ekaraj was offering his Finnish cookies to everyone at the expense of getting the same response “No, again come on Ekaraj, you...”. I think he will never give up until he finishes his to-be famous (or already famous) Finnish cookies and most probably he will end up offering them to people during the first coffee break in Wageningen, but I will make sure that I won’t be there at least.. After a short bus drive, we arrived in the Estonian University of Life Sciences where we were hosted by the department of Food Science and Technology. After the welcome speech of hosting Professor Väino Poikalainen, two other staff members gave an introduction talk about the Estonian University of Life Sciences. Then it was Remko’s turn to introduce Wageningen University and our group. After Remko’s talk there was some time for conversation before the coffee break, which raised some common interest for collaboration, especially for the preparation of some teaching materials. Then we had our coffee break with some typical Estonian pastries. After the coffee break, Kasia, Jacqueline, Nirmal and Ekaraj presented their works. Among all the speakers, including the professors, Ekaraj (today’s hero) was the only one who drew applause twice. When he was just on the stage, he was bombarded with camera flashes and kept his positive energy and smiling posture all the way through his presentation, which brought him an extra applause at the end. After Ekaraj’s presentation, Marta gave the presents of our hosts that we brought from Netherlands and we had a tour in their ‘micro dairy factory’ where they have bench scale facilities for product development and analytical instruments quality tests. At the end of the lab tour Remko used his artistic skills to give one more wise lesson “three glass of a day..”

After the laboratory tour, we had our lunch and we were ready for a five-hour bus drive to our next destination, Riga. As I was the first one to be captured while sleeping in the bus in one of the very early days of our trip, I started a research from that onwards on the tendency of people to fall asleep. The results showed that number of people falling asleep increases exponentially with the number of days passed during the trip and today I was one of those few people who did not join the great sleeping orchestra.

Some of the 'musicians' of the Sleeping Orchestra

At about 7pm, we arrived in our hostel in Riga. Having put our stuff in the hostel we went out for dinner and had a city tour guided by one of our host professors from Latvian University of Agriculture, Ruta Galoburda who made it a great tour for us by telling all the legends and stories about the history of Riga. At the end of the tour which was about 10pm, we went back to hostel and enjoyed the showers. This was about a nice sunny spring day that started in a beautiful Baltic country and ended up in another one. Well, ‘Tot ziens’ and please keep following us.. Hope to meet you again in another day...

Tallinn University of Technology

Here is the report of our visit in Estonia, to the Tallinn University of Technology, written by Kashif Khan.

It’s Monday, May 14, 2012

Good Evening everybody.

I am Kashif Khan; yours RJ at the FM radio of PhD trip from Tartu, Estonia. It’s a sunny day with pleasant wind is blowing. Now I would like to update you on the 8th day of our PhD trip. 

It was sunny morning and I got up early in morning at 6.30. I went for shower and waited there for 10 minutes as there is only one shower for 10 people. So everybody was in hurry to get ready and eat breakfast before 8 o clock. After eating breakfast, we all checked out and started our journey by walking to the bus stop. Unfortunately, we waited there for about 10 minute and surprisingly no bus came to pick up us. After wondering 5 more minute, we came to know that we were on the wrong side. 

where is the bus?

Therefore, we move to the right place where a bus was waiting for us. Its 8.30hrs, when we started journey to Tallinn University of Technology. We reached there after 15 min journey. However, it became a challenge to find the right building and to get in that building. Walking about 15 minutes, the mission was achieved, as the host Professor received us at the entrance of CCFFT building. At 9.10 o clock, after enjoying the tea/ coffee with snacks, Professor Toomas Paalme gave a short introduction of Competence Centre of Food and Fermentation, and Professor Remko Boom introduced the Wageningen UR.

After the introduction, scientific talks started and Ms Kristel share his findings about the aroma of traditional Estonia foods called as Kama. It is mixture of rye, wheat and peas which contains about 89 aroma compounds but only 30 compounds contribute to the aroma. This study revealed that women showed better performance than men in sensory evaluation.  This talk followed by the conventional mushroom processing method. Ekaraj nicely pointed the processing steps that needed to be improved. He also talked about the storage behavior, and significant changes were observed in the water holding capacity and density of mushrooms.   

In the next talk, Lorieda Timberg told about the processing of Sprat fish, a salty fish product that had won sea food competition in Belgium. She told that fresh fish stored in glass jar had better sensory and eating values than stored in traditional plastic bags. As we enjoyed the eating fish, there was a need to understand the breakdown and nutrition extraction mechanism. Anja shared the breakdown mechanism of lactose for better nutritional values. She explained the production of Galacto-oligosacharides (GOS) by enzymes. After such a hard work, we needed to be refreshed and that meant a COFFEE break. 

After drinking coffee and eating different kind of snacks, Rianne was ready to ready to separate the particle of different sizes. This could be possible by controlling the cake layer formation on membrane surface and explained well by model values. This understanding would be helpful to design an optimal process for mild process to separate the particles. These particles are of great interest as they can change the structure of products. In this regards, Anna explained the staling of rye bread which was influenced by the crystallization of starch. The crystallization was observed in storage period and wheat bread showed more crystallization than rye bread. These crystals were less and slowly formed in rye bread compared to wheat bread.

Particles are not only important for the baking industry but also to the dairy industry. Jorien explained that protein particles could explore a new era of healthy food by either modifying the particle properties or protein aggregates. These changes could be achieved by the heat treatment that had changed the water holding properties without changing the original properties. That’s all about the talks till noon. After this short seminar, we visited the labs of CCFFT. Before the laboratory, we turned to green and environment loving scientists by wearing green lab coats. The laboratory facilities were quite nice and with new, updated equipment i.e.  HPLC, GSMS, LCMS, and olfactometer. Olfactometer had a joy stick and microphone that helped to create the “Desired Results”, while you are playing games on olfactometer during sensory evaluation of “Rye Bread”. 

At end of the visit, it’s time for “Thanks”.

Marta said thanks on the behalf of whole group to the Hosts with sweet noise of CLAPPING. 

After this, we visited the Food technology department of university that ended at the Canteen for lunch at 1400hrs, which was 2 hour late than usual Dutch time. The meal was very nice and everybody enjoyed with having chat with other. During lunch, eminent scientist Ekaraj described the four basic necessities of life i.e. Cloth, food, shelter and FACE BOOK. Other scientist did not agree, but this conversion ended in nice and friendly way. 

After lunch, we got into the Bus to travel to Tartu. This journey started with very nice words, Nanan No No, (the way talking tom say). Our bus driver was very active and full of enthusiastic. He drove so CAREFULLY that Anja got worried and started screaming. Later on, every time he took over, words of the day were said;

“HiFive,,,,, we are still alive”

After about three hours’ drive, we reached the hostel. Our rooms were on the 3rd floor and it’s a big challenge for the ladies to take their luggage to the rooms by stairs. Interestingly there is only one toilet for 26 peoples and two showers. So, I am imaging tomorrow morning people in a queue waiting for their turn to get relaxed. After settling in the room, we altogether went to Chinese restaurant for dinner. This was a special dinner for Kevin, Karolina and Sami. Sami only drank two Mango ice tea glasses as his dinner. While Karolina and Kevin were REALLY enjoyed the Chinese Hot Spices, both were shedding tears and try to overcome the spices by drinking more and more. Overall, all the people enjoyed the Chinese food and went for the short tour of the city. This is all about the sunny and pleasant day. 

With this I want to leave you guys with happy mood.

I am singing off from the FM Radio of PhD trip,,

Good luck and have a nice sleep.

See you tomorrow with new RJ.  

Bye Bye 

Kashif Khan

Tallinn

The last two days were spent in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. Lena Jonkawiak wrote of some of our exploits in this beautiful medieval city.


12th May
Saturday morning we left the hostel at 10am. Therefore, some people used the late departure to sleep in after a busy week and 2 birthday parties. Others, however, used the morning to see the famous market hall at the harbor of Helsinki, which opened at 8am. Also the outside market was nice with even more traditional food, but also a lot of wooden souvenirs and artisans. At 9.30am a group even took the chance to visit a church from the inside (after the previously described bad luck with open churches). Fortunately the church was nearby the hostel, so we could take-off at 10am sharp. Since the ferry left very close-by the hostel we had a lot of time before getting onboard, and the following phenomena happens after 4 days without free internet (see photo). 

Free WiFi and this is what happpens

The ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn took only 2.5h (for people with sea sickness probably still a little too long). However, arriving in the early afternoon gave us the chance to already get a first impression of Tallinn, or rather the Old Town of Tallinn. The historic center (Old Town) of Tallinn has been inscribed on UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1997 as an 'exceptionally complete and well preserved example of a medieval northern European trading city'. It is indeed beautiful. 
In the evening we had a group dinner in the ‘Olde Hansa’, which was very gezellig. In a medieval-themed restaurant we got served food such as Crusader’s lentils sauce, barley with nuts, baked-smoked sauerkraut, ginger turnip, and beef, salmon, and sausages made from bear, wild boar and elk. 
However, before we could start our feast, we had to vote for a Table Master, the strongest and most handsome man on the table, who then had to sprinkle salt over a loaf of bread. Afterwards, Remko (the Table Master) had to tear a piece off (we all had to wash our hands before joining the table) to taste if the bread was nice. After approval we ‘ate as if there was no tomorrow’, and tasted rather sweet honey beer, strong dark herbal beer, and light cinnamon beer. 
For some people the evening ended with apple and honey under crispy coat with almond milk, for others it still went on with one or the other drink…

Good Times were had

13th May


Today more or less little groups were visiting not only the Old Town, but the city Tallinn, which has many things to offer. The Kumu art museum was a destination for many, followed by a stroll along the beach, the harbor or within the Rotermann’s quarter (a former factory complex), to see where Tallinn is heading in the 21st century. 
Certainly, some hours of the day were also reserved to answer e-mails, work, relax, and recharge the batteries for the up-coming week in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Some of the views of beautiful Tallinn