• O1: improving cultivation and integrated farming techniques based on innovative processes to increase productivity and the chemical/nutritional profile of pumpkins;
• O2: develop innovative, sustainable and industrially viable methods to extract high added value ingredients with effective preservation capacity;
• O3: identify and isolate natural preservatives with excellent antioxidant and antimicrobial capacity from the by-products of the pumpkin;
• O4: implement sustainable and easy-to-execute techniques to obtain biobased preservatives suitable for use in industrial scale-up processes;
• O5: develop a new formulation of fruit pulp of pumpkin functionalized with the natural preservatives isolated;
• O6: develop/optimize non-thermal processing methods based on innovative technologies that guarantee food quality and safety;
• O7: implement an optimized approach to improve the shelf-life of pumpkin pulp formulation;
• O8: optimize waste/wastewater management and conduct a life cycle assessment to ensure the environmental viability of the operations involved in this proposal;
• O9: promote the dissemination and exploitation of the results generated in this proposal to have an impact on both the scientific community and the economy of the participating countries.

• WP1 – Definition of agronomic conditions for pumpkin production.
• WP2 – Sustainable recovery of compounds with preservation capacity of pumpkin by-products.
• WP3 – Refinement and stabilization of the identified preservative compounds.
• WP4 – Formulation of pumpkin fruit pulp.
• WP5 – Studies of preservation and quality evaluation during the conservation period.
• WP6 – Waste and wastewater management and life cycle assessment.
• WP7 – Management and dissemination of results.

MORE CoLAB leads Activity 6, relating to Life Cycle Assessment and participates in the other activities of the project, namely at the level of valorization of pumpkin by-products (Activity 2), extraction of compounds with preservative capacity (Activity 3), as well as quality studies and shelf time evaluation (Activity 5).

• Improve pumpkin production and yield rate;
• New and sustainable natural preservatives from pumpkin by-products;
• Production of new pumpkin pulp formulation;
• Preserving capacity and long-term stability.