Cooperation with Brazil began in 2011 and has now resulted in seven Danish-Brazilian projects.
Description of the two awarded projects can be found further down.
This year The Danish Council for Strategic Research supported two projects through its bilateral cooperation with Brazil. The projects will promote research in food security with a total of 8.2 million. The projects were selected in collaboration with the Research Council of São Paulo in Brazil (FAPESP) among 8 applications.
In both Denmark and Brazil food security plays an increasingly important role. This places demands both on how we produce our food and food content as well as nutritional value. Danish and Brazilian researchers have come together to address the many challenges. The two projects focus on optimizing fish farming and thus also fish quality and developing strategies to use residual products in new production.
Denmark and Brazil have a common interest in addressing challenges in food safety, and have much to learn from each other, in how to practically meet these challenges. This is the third bilateral call between Denmark and Brazil.
BioSyn - Bioactive components from by-products of food processing used in a synbiotic approach for improving human health and well-being
Danish title: BioSyn - Bioaktive komponenter fra biprodukter fra forarbejdning af fødevarer, der anvendes i en synbiotisk tilgang til forbedring af menneskers sundhed og velbefindende
Grant holder: Lene Jespersen, Department of Food Science, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: lj@life.ku.dk
Grant: 3.3 m DKK
Total budget: 4.3 m DKK
Funding period: 2014-2017
Research training: 1 postdoc
Partners: Brazil: University of Sao Paulo. Denmark: University of Copenhagen.
By-products of food processing, such as fruit and vegetable residues, contain a significant nutritional value in the form of fibers and bioactive substances. These residues should be used to improve human health and to create added value in the food sector. The purpose of this project is to develop a new strategy in which residues can be used as ingredients to new functional food. The products included in the project are residues from pectin production and include shells and fruit substances of tropical fruits such as citruses, oranges and mango fruits and peel and starch from potatoes. The by-products will be studied in combination with probiotic bacteria in order to develop a synbiotic mixture. The by-products and bioactive components will also be examined for their health-promoting effects, including their ability to increase the growth of probiotic bacteria in the gut and their binding to the gut cells and to trigger an immune response. Furthermore, it is investigated whether synbiotics and by-products may affect the intestinal bacterial activity and the composition with a focus on metabolic diseases. The most promising combinations of by-products and probiotic bacteria will be used for development of functional food.
IMPCON - IMProved quality of cultured fish for human CONsumption
Danish title: IMPCON - Bedre kvalitet af opdrættede fisk til spisebrug
Grant holder: Niels Ole Gerslev Jørgensen, Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: nogj@life.ku.dk
Grant: 4.9 m DKK
Total budget: 5.7 m DKK
Funding period: 2014-2017
Research training: 1 ph.d. and 1 postdoc
Partners: Brazil: Universidade Estadual Paulista “Julio de Mesquita Filho”, Instituto de Biociência (UNESP). Denmark: University of Copenhagen, Aalborg University, DHI.
In both Denmark and Brazil half of the populations to a varying degree suffer from overweight and increased occurrences of welfare diseases. However, In Brazil there are also 10 million people suffering from malnutrition. These health problems can be mitigated by the consumption of a more healthy diet rich in proteins. Fish is protein rich food, which also contains essential fatty acids and minerals. Fish from nature does not cover the global demand for fish and today approximately 50 % of all fish products come from fish farming, especially from freshwater farming. In this project, we will ensure that fish farming (tilapia in Sao Paulo and rainbow trout in Denmark) takes place under optimal conditions that ensures production of fish of high quality and with a good taste. Bacterial infections and parasitic infestations reduce the fish’s health and add the risk of human diseases, especially when the fish are used raw, as they typically are in Sao Paulo. In order to reduce infections the fish will be treated with the bioactive and immuno-stimulant drug β-glucan, which is a residue from the bio-ethanol production in Brazil. The fish’s health will be related to water quality, which will get improved with respect to the reproduction of toxin and off-taste producing microorganisms. The research project is carried out as a close bilateral cooperation in an established network, and it is our ambition that the results will be immediately applicable by local fish farmers and contribute to a future sustainable and profitable production of healthy fish in both Sao Paulo and Denmark.