The project started at the university of Porto chemistry and biochemistry department in 2016.

The team’s goals meet one of the UN directives,the management of agro-food waste, from the Horizon 2020 program. The project aims to use compounds from the metabolism of plants involved in wine production and to incorporate it into food. It also hopes to transform the residues into a natural food colouring, blue, to replace the synthetics ones in food industry through the wastes.

The derivatives called phenolic compounds, when consumed are thought to have health benefits such as preventing heart diseases and atherosclerosis.

At the moment, the team is still studying the interaction between the compounds in order to stabilize the colour of the pigments and increase the solubility in water to be able to apply them in food products, said Joana Oliveira, one of the team researchers.