Contributions

Co-founder of JAAC: http://www.jaac.group/

I am a co-founder of the Jerusalem Artichoke Association of Canada (JAAC), a non-profit organization established in 2016 with it’s mission to promote and expand the Jerusalem artichoke industry in Canada by providing a single point of contact for growers, processors, food manufactueres, product developers, and governement for better collaboration in order to strengthen the value chain of Jerusalem artichoke from farm to marketplace.

Jerusalem artichoke, a forgotton plant in Canada first cultivated by indigenous communities, has tremendous potential due to it’s low agricultural input requirements and its high inulin content that can be used for a variety of applications in the food industry (fat/sugar replacement, stablizer, dietary fibre, prebiotic) as well as for biofuel production (ehtnaol, butanol).

Editor:

I am the co-editor (invitation from Oxford) of Dietary Fibre Functionality in Food and Nutraceuticals: From Plant to Gut (328 pages), a high-quality book related to food processing, nutrition, and physical and chemical properties of food. The book discusses ingredients, product development, processing and regulation issues, biotechnology, and new techniques and applications for bioactives in foods.

Discovery of ARs in purslane seeds:

Gunenc A., Rowland O., Xu H., Marangoni A. and Hosseinian F. Portulaca oleracea seeds as novel source of alkylresorcinols and its phenolic profiles during germination. LWT- Food Science and Technology. 101: 246-250. (2019).

This study reported for the first time the discovery of phenolic lipids (ARs) in purslane seeds. Phenolic lipids are a precious type of antioxidant that due to their unique structure are capable of incorporating into cellular membranes where they can exert their bioactive properties.