Some of Scotland’s top scientists are to lead a European project to discover how to make healthy food even better for us.

SCRI at Invergowrie, Scotland’s leading institute for research on crops and plants, has won a share of European Union funding worth £2.5 million (€3.9 million) to find ways of boosting the nutritional value of crops.

The Develonutri project will focus on plant metabolites. These are small, natural compounds found in grains, fruit and vegetables and play a key role in human health and well-being.

The work will be undertaken by a consortium of European scientists and companies led by SCRI’s Dr Derek Stewart. Dr Stewart manages a team at SCRI that researches food quality, health and nutrition.

He said: “For many foods, the journey from the farm gate to the dinner plate is often accompanied by large reductions in the level of the natural compounds that we know are beneficial to health.”

“This can lead to chemicals having to be added back into the food to supplement these losses. As part of this project we will look at the natural variation in the health beneficial compounds and (micro) nutrients in three main staple food crops: potatoes, wheat and tomatoes.”

“We will follow them through many post-harvest processing and transportation chains to establish to what extent - and where - the nutrients are being lost,” said Dr Stewart.

The scientists engaged in the study will use a variety of technologies to analyse the foodstuffs. They will be looking at crops in their raw form and throughout their transformation to supermarket foods such as mashed potato, bread, biscuits, pasta and canned or packaged salad tomatoes.

The first meeting of the project team that aims to boost the goodness in food will take place at SCRI in Invergowrie, Dundee today (Thursday February 8th.)

In a separate development at SCRI, researchers are to carry out a study into the health benefits of the once staple Scottish food…oats. The research institute’s Quality, Health and Nutrition team will work with the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research based at Aberystwyth. The project is being funded by the Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department (SEERAD).

SCRI’s Director, Professor Peter Gregory, said that by working with scientists from around the world, the Invergrowrie team hoped to establish the health benefits of oats and to identify how the nutritional quality of oats could be enhanced.

Professor Gregory said: “We all know oats are good for you, but thanks to the support from SEERAD, our scientists will now be able to find out why. We are particularly keen to find out how the natural compounds in oats could impact on illnesses such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes.”

He continued: “If we can deliver nutritionally enhanced crops there’ll be huge benefits for human health and also for the farmers who grow them.”