A new partnership aims to conserve, evaluate and promote a heretofore underused collection of berry, grape and potato germplasm.

Berries and grapes are good for us. This much we know, but exactly how good are they? A new research project has been launched to help answer this question.

"Berries and small fruits may not be big in size, but they deliver a huge payload in terms of health," asserts Dr. Pablo Eyzaguirre, senior scientist in anthropology and socioeconomics with Bioversity International, one of the organizations leading the project.

Bioversity will collaborate with the Centre de Recherche Public - Gabriel Lippmann (CRPGL) and the NI Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry (VIR by its Russian abbreviation) to evaluate the nutritional and health properties of selected accessions in VIR's germplasm collection, ensure that they are securely conserved and promote their value to policymakers.

The biodiversity and nutritional and health properties of grape accessions at the Vavilov Institute will be analysed.
Credit: Rami Khalil, Bioversity International.

The project, financed by the government of Luxembourg, concentrates on small berries (Ribes, Rubus, Lonicera and Sorbus) and grapes (Vitis). Many accessions of potato (Solanum tuberosum) will be included in the project. The examination of the nutrient content of the accessions will be carried out at CRPGL in Luxembourg.

Berries are packed with antioxidant phytochemicals. Antioxidants scavenge free-radicals and help reduce oxidant stress in the body. This is believed to play a significant role in preventing a wide variety of diseases, including degenerative neurological and cardiovascular ailments and many forms of cancer.

The antioxidant phytochemicals the project will examine are polyphenols and carotenoids. Polyphenols are found in grapes and other dark berries. The two major carotenoids to be examined are lycopene and lutein. Lutein concentrates in the retina and may help protect eyes from the harmful affects of ultraviolet radiation.

Eyzaquirre notes that "agricultural biodiversity in northern ecosystems tends to be overlooked, but for the indigenous peoples in the North, berries once made up an important part of their diet." For these indigenous communities, health problems that arise in the transition to a modern diet that is rich in energy but otherwise poor in nutrition - problems such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disorders - have become particularly severe. The Centre for Indigenous Peoples' Nutrition and Environment at McGill University in Canada will take part in the project and evaluate the glycemic and anti-diabetic properties in the selected accessions.

Once priority accessions have been selected, the project's partners will work together to ensure they are safely conserved. But conserving the germplasm of these crops isn't easy. All are vegetatively propagated , so their germplasm must be conserved using in vitro or cryopreservation technologies or else in field genebanks.

Currently, only about 200 of the 23,000 accessions of berries and fruit crops in VIR's germplasm collection, and 300 of the 9,000 or so potato accessions, are stored in vitro. The rest are cultivated in field genebanks, which makes them vulnerable to pests, diseases and other stresses.

CRPGL, a leader in the area of plant biotechnology, will work with VIR to ensure that priority accessions identified by the project are safely conserved using the latest in vitro and cryopreservation techniques and that their genetic diversity is analyzed using molecular marker technology. Documenting diversity among the varieties of a crop is extremely important when evaluating its health and nutritional properties. In rice, for example, some varieties contain 2.5 times more iron than others. Indeed, for some crops and some nutrients, differences among varieties can be a hundredfold.

Dr. Jozef Turok, director of Bioversity's Regional Office for Europe, emphasizes that "by strengthening VIR's expertise in germplasm conservation and analysis, the project will help safeguard not only the genetic diversity of the crops included in this project but all the vegetatively propagated crop species and varieties held in this globally important collection."

The impact of the research will depend on making sure the research results reach a wide audience. "We can't just let the results of this work stay within the research community," Eyzaguirre notes. "If the health and nutrition value of these crops isn't appreciated by the public and policymakers, obtaining the support needed for their ongoing conservation and further research becomes all the more difficult."

Making sure research on the health and nutritional properties of agricultural biodiversity reaches policymakers is an essential part of the project's overall goal. By establishing links between the research community and policymakers, the project hopes to identify and build support for policies that can harness agricultural biodiversity to create new economic opportunities for producers and deliver health and nutrition benefits to consumers.

"This project is very timely," says Turok. "Governments are realizing that growth in their agricultural sector won't mean simply increasing current production but also responding to consumer demand for a wider variety of high-quality, nutritious foods."