University of Turku (UTU), Finland’s second largest multidisciplinary university, is a research-led university recognised for the quality of research, teaching, and excellent support services in eight faculties: Humanities, Science, Technology, Medicine, Law, Social Science, Education, and Turku School of Economics (QS ranking top 300). The strategic research and education profiles strengthen internal collaboration and create platforms for networks, business collaboration, innovations and strategic partnerships.

Research at the Food Sciences unit at the Department of Life Technologies focuses on understanding the composition, nutritional properties, sensory qualities, and health benefits of food resources as well as application of the knowledge in food development research. The unit has excellent infrastructure and research facilities for modern food and nutrition research, and possesses multidisciplinary know-how in nutrition physiology, food toxicology, clinical nutrition, phytochemistry, food analysis and biotechnology. Versatile state-of-the-art methods of biochemical and chemical analysis, metabolomics, sensory science, in vitro models, and clinical intervention studies are applied to investigate the impact of cultivars, environmental factors, and technologies on composition, quality, and bioactivities of food and its health impact.

Role in Healthferm

The UTU Food Sciences unit provides non-targeted LC-MS -based metabolomics analytics for the various work packages within the HealthFerm project: In work package 1 the focus is on the biochemical effect of microbial modifications upon fermentation and on screening metabolically interesting microbial consortia. In work package 2 the focus lies on the various raw materials and their compositional changes related to the various fermentation processes, and finally, within work package 3 the analytical focus is on the samples originating from the human dietary intervention challenges.

Team members