Pablo Cardenas

Most of our food comes from only a dozen of plants, making our food system highly vulnerable to plant pests, diseases and climate change. In nature, there are thousands of plants with potential to be part of a future diverse and resilient agriculture, but many of them contain unpleasant compounds. In Back to the Future, I will bring from the past and develop the wild plant Chenopodium album as a new crop. Its seeds have high protein content and were eaten in Denmark during prehistorical times, but contain bitter and anti-nutritional chemical compounds called saponins. I have established a unique collection of C. album from all over Denmark and characterized their protein and saponin contents. In Back to the Future, I will combine the latest molecular, agricultural and food sciences and technologies to understand the molecular basis of saponin biosynthesis, its bitterness and plant domestication to develop C. album into a valuable plant for future food security.