Outreach
META-PHOR is dedicated to solving current limitations to the application
of metabolomics technologies for research into food quality and safety.
While the consortium has a strong technological orientation, we are working
closely with crop scientists and nutritionists to enable the design of those
technologies most needed to answer the questions and needs of both science
and industry in the quest to meet consumer demands. This initiative has
a strong European focus but not exclusively so. A deliberate choice has
been made to look at broader global nutrition issues and, in this regard,
research partners in The Philippines (The International Rice Research Institute)
and PR Lao play a crucial role in helping develop metabolomics specifically
for rice applications. In addition, META-PHOR is also linked to the 'Harvest
Plus' initiative where great emphasis is being placed e.g. on issues
concerning food micronutrients
and biofortification
for the developing world.
To make sure that knowledge, developed within META-PHOR, will not only reach
the partners but also a broader scientific community, results are regularly
being presented at Congresses, in publications, workshops and on this public
Web site. In addition, regular meetings with interested SME’s
are used to disseminate results and insight. Procedures have been put in
place to both protect but also put to use potential IP that may be developed
within META-PHOR.
Outreach activities 2007:
Sponsoring / co-organizing Rice Quality Workshop, Los Baños, The Philippines,
April, 2007
Sponsoring / co-organizing Workshop Metabolomics, Wageningen University,
June 2007
Sponsoring / Co-organizing International Metabolomics Congress, Manchester,
june 2007
Outreach activities 2008:
Brassica: Having contacted the International Society for
Horticultural Science and specifically the Crucifer / Brassica Working Group,
it was decided to hold an evening workshop at the 2008 Crucifer Genetics
symposium. Indications were that metabolomics was little known within this
community and so it was agreed with the organisers that an introductory
workshop would be very welcome and should be open to everyone. Three META-PHOR
representatives specially attended this meeting and lectures were held on
a general introduction to the topic [P1 Hall] followed by a presentation
on metabolomics technologies based on NMR [P3 Ward] and MS [P1 de Vos] approaches.
Where possible results directly obtained from the project were presented.
At the end there was a general question and answer session. Approximately
100 delegates attended this workshop and the feedback afterwards was very
positive. A publication on this activity is in preparation.
Rice: A 2 day workshop was organised for the international
rice community and, in accordance with the focus of META-PHOR’s rice activities,
the focus was on nutritional quality and flavour. Representatives of 15
major rice breeding / producing countries were invited to attend of which
12 were able to do so. The workshop was opened by the Deputy Minister of
Agriculture of Laos and a welcome speech was also given by the Official
EU Representative in Laos. This was a fully interactive programme where
presentations from both the metabolomics and rice breeding sides were held
and there was much time planned for both group and 1 on 1 discussions. It
was also possible to have Prof. Susan McCouch (Cornell, USA) join this meeting.
Prof. McCouch is one of the worlds leading rice geneticists and ‘happened
to be in the area’ and gave a plenary lecture on rice genetics and quality.
A full report of this meeting was written and submitted to the EU and is
included here as Appendix A2 together with a copy of the article in The
Vientiane Times.
OUTREACH: There was some good local PR for this meeting as a local TV News
crew attended the meeting and the national English language newspaper covered
the Minister’s speech. In addition a subsequent Euronews piece resulted
(see below). Finally, resulting from this interaction the Coordinator [P1],
the primary rice materials coordinator [P12] and Prof. McCouch subsequently
wrote a review article for Trends in Plant Science on The Genetics of Rice
Quality.
Melon: There was an excellent opportunity to interact with the melon community this year through the biennial international cucurbits congress. Unfortunately however, this clashed with the already planned Rice Workshop. Nevertheless, Prof Schaeffer [P11] did attend this meeting and introduced and spoke on the META-PHOR melon activities.
DEVELO-NUTRI: Despite our best efforts it did not prove possible to find a suitable date for a joint meeting in December 2008 at P2 (also partner in the other project). Nevertheless, Dr Kopka [P2 META-PHOR] was invited to join the DEVELO-NUTRI meeting as META-PHOR representative. Resulting from this meeting it was decided to hold a joint satellite meeting on the Ring Experiments early in 2009 to discuss the outcomes and talk about a potential joint paper.
Additional Meetings
META-PHOR was invited to attend the ASEAN conference in Manilla to discuss
aspects of collaboration between EU and SE Asia. META-PHOR is one of the
few research projects running involving SE Asia partners and is the first
one ever to have a research partner from Laos. The project was well represented
at this meeting by both Dr Barry and Prof Ziegler from IRRI. A poster was
prepared and presented, Dr Barry gave an introductory talk on the project
at the Round Table discussion and in the plenary session, Prof Ziegler presented
META-PHOR as an excellent example of SE Asian – EU collaboration.
Outreach via television: EuroNews
META-PHOR has been able to attract the attention of the pan European TV
broadcaster EuroNews which has recently prepared a major piece on our activities.
The focus was on our rice quality research and the interaction between the
EU and SE Asia. Filming took place in both Wageningen and at IRRI, also
at a time when our Laos partner P13 was also there. This significant, 9
minute piece has been transmitted throughout Europe with multiple daily
repeats for 2 weeks in October and has also been selected for repetition
over the Christmas period.
This piece is visible via:
http://www.euronews.net/en/article/09/10/2008/european-and-asian-quest-for-better-rice/
and is now also on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIsv3KRyncQ
Scientific Publications:
As is clear from publications Meta-Phor,
a wide range of publications, both experimental and review papers have been
written linked to or directly derived from META-PHOR activities. In addition,
a number of papers based on the ring experiments are in progress and a whole
series of methodology papers are being prepared for a book to be produced
as a project Deliverable in 2009.
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