Food safety has globally become a topic of growing interest in recent years. Hence, in March 2015 the 2nd National Scientific Food Conference with international participation was held at New Bulgarian University (NBU), Sofia. The conference was hosted by NBU (Department of Natural Sciences, Biolaboratory). Other coorganizers were the Bulgarian Society for Microbiology (founded in 1928), the Stephan Angeloff Institute of Microbiology – Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) and the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency (BFSA). The Organizing and Scientific Committee members were prominent scientists from BAS, Sofia University, University of Food Technologies in Plovdiv and top-level managers of the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency. The conference was held under the auspices of NBU's Rector. It was financially supported by the Central Fund for Strategic Development of NBU as well as by several laboratory equipment companies. Recent results in the NBU Biolaboratory and the ongoing projects initially laid the foundations of the Food Conference and its future organization biennially.
The 2nd Food Conference was a large-scale local scientific event gathering together over 150 delegates who presented 100 plenary lectures, oral presentations and posters in six topics: food quality, food biotechnology, food safety, microbiological control of food, probiotics and prebiotics and varia. A plenary lecture of great interest was that of Prof. Vaso Taleski (University ‘Goce Delchev’, Sthip, Macedonia) focused on nanomicrobiology, the application of nanobiosensors in detecting food pathogenes and the advantages of metal nanomaterials with unique antimicrobial activities, such as silver, gold and titanium. Prof. Encho Savov (Military Medical Academy, Sofia, Bulgaria) gave a key plenary lecture that explored the end of the postantibiotic era and multidrug- and pandrug-resistant bacteria. Assoc. Prof. Milen Georgiev (Stephan Angeloff Institute of Microbilogy, BAS) presented a plenary lecture on metabolomics applied in natural products and biotechnology. A novel probiotic product was presented by Kiril Petkov. The product contains a strain of Lactobacillus bulgaricus which was isolated from mountain snowdrop. It is currently patented in the USA and is available on the market there. The product shows potential to 100% growth inhibition of pathogens such as Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Acinetobacter baumanii as well as Pseudomonas aeruginosa in 48 h. A core talk on probiotic lactobacilli found in traditional Balkan dairy products and their health effect was presented by Prof. Svetla Danova (Stephan Angeloff Institute of Microbilogy, BAS).
The conference was attended by both Bulgarian and foreign scientists form Switzerland and other Balkan countries, e.g. Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo.
The conference coincided with the 110th Anniversary of the discovery of Lactobacillus bulgaricus by Dr Stamen Grigoroff. This was celebrated in a solemn speech given by Academician Angel Galabov.
Another participant was Diagnosis Press and the latest developments in journal Biotechnology & Biotechnological Equipment in the context of international academic publishing practices were presented. Evgeniya Dimova and Snejana Pavlova introduced the development of the journal based on a modern publishing platform in which editorial experience and Good Publishing Practices meet technology to achieve knowhow. The discussion that followed focused on the partnership between Diagnosis Press and Taylor & Francis, the new publisher of the journal since 2014, as a means to open the horizon for a new culture of modern publishing ethics, distribution and communication of top research not only in Biotechnology & Biotechnological Equipment, but also in all other Taylor & Francis journals.
The poster session included over 60 posters. Three of them were selected by the Scientific Committee for The Best Poster of Young Scientist Award: 1st place was awarded to the poster of Zahmanov et al. (Bulgaria) titled ‘Beyond the nutritional value of Sambucus ebulus: metabolomics and antioxidant activities’; 2nd place, to the poster of Nemska et al. (Bulgaria) on the topic of ‘Isolation and initial characterization of lactic acid bacteria from traditional dairy products’; and 3rd place, Logonia et al. (Serbia) for their research on ‘Electrochemical determination of redox potential in infant formula and human breast milk.’ All awarded authors were PhD students.
The second conference day was devoted to a workshop on molecular methods in food control. The workshop was conducted in the NBU Biolaboratory, with the participation of ELTA-90, BIORAD and Progene Molecular Diagnostic Ltd.
The conference was announced by the BNT-2 TV channel as well as by Quo vadis, the gazette of the Bulgarian Union of Physicians. More information about the conference and the Abstract book are available at the following website: http://ebox.nbu.bg/2foodconference/. The presentations, posters and the Abstract book were included in a CD-ROM (ISBN 978-954-535-624-7).
The next, 3rd International Food Conference will be held on 23–25 March 2017, at NBU, Sofia. The first announcement will be sent in 2016.