Department of Agricultural Products Quality (DAPQ) was established in April 2004 as a logical result of development in agro-food sector demanding students with a wide range of knowledge about agricultural products quality and it's relation to the processing in food and other industries.
Focus:
DAPQ is focused on the quality of both animal and plant agricultural products according to the Common Agricultural Policy and European food legislation. The aim is to cover food safety and duality of agricultural products „from field to fork“.
Educational activity:
DAPQ gives lectures for students in bachelor, master and doctor degree study programmes in the following fields:
quality and processing of plant products
quality and processing of animal products
milk and dairy products duality and processing
sensory analysis of agricultural products
food preservation and post- harvest processing
food safety, duality and certification
Research activity:
Research and scientific program of DAPQ covers several fields of interests.
Laboratory of cereals provides a wide range of analyses, rheological parameters determinations and quality assessment of corn and cereals regarding to their bakery processing properties. We also carry out experiments with different kinds of flour made by milling in laboratory scale followed by their quality assessment.
Milk and dairy products laboratory is equipped for routine analyses of milk and dairy products as well as for some special ones. Being interested not only in cow milk products, our research is also focused on goat and sheep milk, farmer processing and quality control of cheese and other products made from these non-cow kinds of milk. We are also interested in the influence of milk composition to the quality and composition of final products made from it. One of our projects in the field of dairy products is focused on the quality of smoked cheese and the influence of different smoking processes to it.
Our experiments with vegetables are focused on growing them under different fertilizing conditions: nonmanured, manured with mineral fertilizers and manured with fermented slurry. Sensory analysis of agricultural products is focused on organoleptic changes of plant and animal products during their storage and processing.
International contacts:
We are in cooperation with the Department of Hygiene and Food Safety at the Slovak Agricultural University in Nitra. Together with this department we organized the conference „Poultry and milk in Human Nutrition“ in May 2006.
Other activities:
DAPQ organizes a regular meeting of farmers twice a year. One of them is focused on sensory assessment of farm processed products, the other one on analytical methods for milk and dairy products, farm cheese making, HACCP systems for farmers etc.