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.