BreedingValue research results presented at FAVHEALTH Symposium 2024

From November 11-15, 2024 the international scientific community gathered in Rotorua, New Zealand for the X International Symposium on Human Health Effects of Fruits and Vegetables — FAVHEALTH 2024. Researcher from many disciplines were brought together to discuss the role of fruits and vegetables in the human diet and their gaining increased attention with a shift to more sustainable diets and people adopting vegan/vegetarian/flexitarian eating patterns.

As part of the FAVHEALTH 2024 Symposium, Luca Mazzoni from the Marche Polytechnic University in Ancona (Italy) presented a poster entitled: "Vitamin B9 content in strawberry genotypes and accessions from different European countries: the Breeding Value project".

The poster showed the results of work conducted within the BreedingValue project to evaluate by HPLC the amount of folate or Vitamin B9 content in strawberry genotypes cultivated in different environments with the goal to determine the genotypes that best suit with different environment for the benefit of European farmers.

The evaluation shows that the genotype determines fruit folate contents, but different average levels can be observed in different countries, while genotypes originating from the BreedingValue partner institution UPM (IT) show the highest average value of folates, followed by genotypes from the BreedingValue partners IFAPA (ES), NIBIO (NO), and INVENIO (FR). It has to be noted that these are only preliminary results since more samples will be analyzed for the 2022 season and also repeated for the 2023 season. Once available, the overall results will be helpful to better understand the best-performing genotypes in the different environments in terms of folate content.