Agricultural Sciences

This course is an introduction to the chemistry of foods, more specifically the chemistry of groups of compounds present in food: carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, phenolic compounds, and enzymes. Chemical changes that take place during the storage and processing of crops and food are learned. In addition, during the laboratory classes, students design experiments, analyze the composition of food products, and write a scientific lab report. Food technologists should be able to estimate the relevance of various chemical and enzymatic processes by making calculations. To practice this part of food chemistry, the quantification of specific reactions is practiced in calculation cases.

This course covers how to differentiate wine-growing soils and understand how, along with the climate, they influence the functioning of the plant and maturation. It also discusses how to characterize maturation and the biochemical processes involved in deciding the harvest date; understand the organization and functioning of the plant to produce quality grapes in a given pedo-climatic context; and use all the data on the organization and functioning of the plant to produce quality grapes in a case study context.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrolment is by permission of the instructor. The course focuses on topics including: the basics for ICT, big data, and IoT; the introduction to IoT, application scenarios, enabling definitions and technologies, and cloud and fog computing; the main components of IoT solutions, and big data and references to Artificial Intelligence; and IoT and big data services from the product to the service, and application cases in smart agriculture. The course content is divided into 6 parts: 1) introduction to computer science; 2) Internet of Things (IoT); 3) big data and Artificial Intelligence; 4) tools for data analysis, elaboration, and visualizations; 5) field work; and 6) seminar.

This course provides individual research training for students in the Junior Year Engineering Program through the experience of belonging to a specific laboratory at Tohoku University. Students are assigned to a laboratory with the consent of the faculty member in charge. They participate in various group activities, including seminars, for the purposes of training in research methods and developing teamwork skills. The specific topic studied depends on the instructor in charge of the laboratory to which each student is assigned. The methods of assessment vary with the student's project and laboratory instructor. Students submit an abstract concerning the results of their individual research each semester and present the results near the end of this program.

This course covers how to establish the relationship between chemical and physicochemical mechanisms and the evolution of the quality of a wine. It also covers how to choose the analyses adapted to control or respond to a given problem, carry them out, interpret the results, and give the necessary advice and prescriptions.

Knowledge of foodborne microorganisms is essential for supplying safe and wholesome foods with a long shelf life. This course offers an introduction to the basics of food microbiology and discusses both the negative aspects of micro-organisms, such as spoilage and disease and the positive effects of fermentative processes. Characteristics of food that influence growth and inactivation of micro-organisms (e.g. water activity, pH, preservatives, heating, modified atmosphere packaging) are reviewed. The course provides a detailed introduction to the main bacterial foodborne pathogens (e.g. Campylobacter, Salmonella, E. coli O157, Listeria monocytogenes) and methods for microbial examination, but also deals with foodborne viruses, parasites, and fungi. Moreover, good manufacturing practices, personal hygiene, and the principles of cleaning and disinfection are explained. In a three-week lab class, spoilage organisms and pathogens are isolated from food products and environments using traditional and molecular methods. In the tutorial classes, molecular identification methods are explored, and the effect of several bactericidal treatments is investigated.

This course gives insights into resource management in sustainable (including organic) agriculture through the integration of knowledge about farm components (soils, plants, livestock) and the surrounding landscapes. The course includes on each of the four themes: soils, crops, animals, and systems analysis/modeling as well as an excursion to a local dairy farm. Basic knowledge of soil, crop, and livestock science is assumed.

This course covers how choose the appropriate sensory analysis and tasting tools and interpret the results to make a judgment on different types of wines and wine by-products. Topics include sensory analysis; vocabulary, writing, and technique; sensory evaluation tests, statistical tools, and processing; and typicality and tasting. 

This course provides an introduction to and covers the basics of oenological analysis (principles, implementation, uncertainties, applications).

This course focuses on the social transformations of food systems. More specifically it focuses on a) how less sustainable systems of food provisioning are deliberately transformed into more sustainable ones and b) how this transformation process and its implications can be understood and assessed from a social sciences perspective.  The course provides a social sciences perspective on the dynamics and diversity of sustainable systems of food provisioning and includes the tools to assess their impact on the environment, society, and health. This is achieved by a combination of lectures, group assignments, and workshops.