Luis Aldeanueva: "Replicating industrial processes at pilot scale in our facilities is our greatest strength"
From the first months of life, milk is an essential food in the diet. In addition to sugars and proteins, its consumption provides many essential nutrients for growth and development, such as calcium and vitamin A. For this reason, coinciding with the celebration of World Milk Day, we talked to Luis Aldeanueva Potel, who has made this food his job.
After graduating as an Agricultural Engineer and Technical Engineer in Agricultural and Food Industries from the Higher Polytechnic Engineering School of the University of Santiago de Compostela, Luis Aldeanueva changed the classrooms of Campus Terra for the Dairy Products and Food Technologies Classroom (APLTA), which he joined as a scholarship holder in 2000.
Throughout these two decades, the Senior Research Technician of the Projects Area has experienced firsthand the transformation of this unit, which has become a true reference for the European dairy industry today.
This position is largely due to the possibilities offered by its laboratories and pilot plant, where all kinds of industrial processes are replicated on a reduced scale, and to the close relationship that has been forged with the sector's companies.
The day-to-day work of Luis Aldeanueva, a native of Ourense, covers many areas: food microbiology and quality control, tangential filtration technologies, transformation processes of liquefied and fermented vegetables, evaporated and pasteurized products... The researcher also participates in developing dairy foods present in any home, such as yoghurt, cheese, ice cream, mousse, or butter.
Today, we talked with him about the importance of dairy products and APLTA's current and future research lines.
-Today is World Milk Day. Why is this food of enormous importance to human beings?
-Milk is an essential food for humans as it is for animals since it is a "superfood" (a concept often used lightly) capable of providing us with all the nutrients necessary for our development. Proof of this is that we feed exclusively on milk during the first stages of our lives.
-You have been a Senior Research Technician in APLTA's Projects Area for over 20 years. What role does this Technological Platform play in transferring knowledge in the dairy sector? Why is this dynamic so important?
-APLTA, within the Campus Terra Technology Platforms, has a particularity that makes it unique, and that is the close relationship we have had for decades with the dairy and food industry, with which we collaborate in our daily activities.
Thus, thanks to our experience in the sector and the application of scientific knowledge in the research, technological development and innovation projects in which we participate, we obtain results that are directly applied in the industries with which we work. This often results in new products and technological improvements that can ultimately be found in the markets.
-Being part of a specialization campus such as Campus Terra, communication between the faculties and APLTA must be very fluid. How do these synergies benefit your lines of work and research? How relevant is it that the different projects are carried out from more multidisciplinary perspectives?
-Being part of Campus Terra and USC is vital for our daily activities. As I said, our experience and activity are focused on serving the dairy and food industry, providing services and technological solutions.
Given the wide variety of fields of knowledge present on the campus, our relationship with other research groups and laboratories on the campus allows us to establish collaborations to access multidisciplinary research projects and to have essential support in areas such as basic scientific research and certain analytical services.
-The ability to replicate industrial processes at APLTA can provide numerous competitive advantages. What are these? What infrastructure is necessary to carry out these types of activities?
-Our greatest strength is our ability to replicate industrial processes at a pilot scale in our facilities. This allows industries to simulate their processes, perform multiple variations on them and evaluate the impact of the different variables on the final result—all this at a reduced scale.
It is precisely due to this scaling that the consumption of resources and, therefore, the costs of the process that we carry out in the pilot are significantly lower than the costs at the industrial scale. In addition, the possibilities of applying variations in the product and process are much greater than in most industries, given the versatility of our facilities. Therefore, we provide industries with a service that helps them be more effective, efficient and ultimately more competitive.
Our pilot plant is unique worldwide. It is a 2000 m2 plant where we have practically all the technologies used in the dairy industry, many of which are also used in other food industries. In addition, we have several laboratories for chemical, microbiological, sensory, and physical properties analysis that support the projects carried out on the plant.
-Milk has been with us for thousands of years. Even so, some aspect of it is always unknown to us. What could be the most promising lines of research concerning this food?
-It is true that milk and dairy products have been very well studied for their nutritional and technological properties. Although new products come onto the market every year, the main families of dairy products are the same as always.
Perhaps the lines of dairy research in the coming years will be the fractionation of the different milk components (protein, fat and sugars), thus creating "tailor-made" dairy products for different consumers. Biotechnology will also play a key role in developing microorganisms and enzymes that transform milk to obtain certain properties in the final product.
Another field to be developed is the valorization of by-products from dairy production, such as whey from cheese production, which has been a handicap for decades, especially for small and medium-sized industries.
-Food preservation often involves altering its natural state. What are the keys to maintaining the nutritional properties of these processed products?
-Man has preserved food throughout history in different ways, but the objective is not always to keep the nutritional properties intact but sometimes to transform them.
In some cases, as in the case of heat treatments for the preservation of liquid foods, the objective is to preserve the food's natural state as intact as possible. In this case, the aim is to find the technological solution that achieves the desired preserving effect and the minimum possible alteration of its components. This is the case with UHT treatment for liquid milk.
At other times, however, it is a matter of preserving by transforming one foodstuff into a different one. For example, cheese is a way of preserving milk by reducing its water content. In this case, the aim is not to maintain the characteristics of the milk but to obtain another food with different properties and characteristics that are also nutritionally very interesting. Or yoghurt, which, after fermentation, becomes a product that is better than milk and has better digestibility.
-Training is essential to perpetuate the work and innovation in this sector. Does the dairy world attract many young people? What measures are taken by APLTA to promote interest in the dairy sector and attract young talent?
-At APLTA, promoting the dairy sector, teaching and training are fundamental activities as part of the university community.
We periodically organize informative events, such as the celebration of World Milk Day on May 31. As we do every year, we will receive primary school students from different schools in our province and conduct workshops and activities with them to promote knowledge and consumption of dairy products.
We also have several degrees closely related to the dairy sector on our campus. Many of these students, as well as international students from other universities, come to our facilities for internships and to get to know our centre and the activities we carry out. It is also common for final-year students to stay with us as part of their internships or final degree/master's and doctoral thesis projects.