Food metabolomics: META-PHOR. A new European research initiative

There is an ever-growing demand for improved food-stuffs which better meet the needs of both industry and the consumer. With increasing emphasis being placed on health and safety-related aspects of our food, there is also a strong desire to develop new tools to monitor and improve the quality of what we eat A new technology, metabolomics, has the potential to become one such toot of major value in this field. Although still in its infancy, metabolomics-based strategies are already being designed for a diversity of applications in, for example, food processing and quality control, plant breeding for improved crop varieties and in the development of novel foodstuffs. The importance of this technology has also recently been recognized by the EU Research division which now funds a multi-national metabolomics initiative focused on plant applications.