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This project is coordinated by IRD, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement

NUTRIPASS unit "Food and Nutrition Research in the Global South"

UMR Nutripass,                                    911 avenue Agropolis, BP 64501        34394 Montpellier Cedex, FRANCE

Christèle HUMBLOT , Coordinator

Youna HEMERY

Tel : + 33 (0)4 67 41 62 48
Fax: + 33 (0)4 67 41 61 57

 

 

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University of Helsinki (Finland)

University of Helsinki

Department of Food and Environmental Sciences

 

Website: http://www.helsinki.fi/food-and-environment/

The team at the University of Helsinki (UHEL), the Department of Food and Environmental Sciences, consists of researchers with different backgrounds. UHEL has up-to-date laboratory facilities as well as modern equipment for research activities in chemistry, food technology, microbiology, and nutrition.

Research on vitamins − their occurrence in foods, chemical and nutritional properties, importance in foods and diets and factors influencing the levels − has for long been one of UHEL’s major research areas. Recent research has focused on natural enhancement of vitamins in cereal and legume matrices by breeding, fractionation, and bioprocessing. Food folate analysis methods have been verified by several international intercomparison tests.

UHEL has great experience in research on lactic acid bacteria in food fermentations and also expertise in molecular microbiology and proteomics. The group is well connected with European scientists through participation in several EU-funded projects.

UHEL is involved in all WPs and is the leader of WP3. Furthermore, UHEL will provide training on food folate analysis and support other partners in methodological issues.

  • WP1: Dr Riitta Freese and Dr Liisa Korkalo , representing nutrition sciences, have expertise on the assessment of dietary intake and nutritional status, with previous experience on studying nutritional status of adolescent girls in Mozambique.
  • WP2: On the microbiology side, Pr Per Saris studies LAB populations (strains isolation and characterisation) from fermented food and animal digestive tract, and Dr Pekka Varmanen has expertise in molecular microbiology, bacterial genomics and proteomics.
  • WP3: The food chemistry group with Dr Susanna Kariluoto , Pr Vieno Piironen , and Dr Minnamari Edelmann have expertise on the development and validation of analytical methods for folate and other bioactive compounds and their natural enhancement in plant-based foods.

The FolEA project is part of the ERA-Net « Developing African-European joint collaboration for Science and Technology Â» (ERAfrica), financially supported by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme (grant agreement: 266603).