Food engineer – Professor Jenny Ruales Nájera

ISP would like to recognise Prof Jenny Ruales Nájera for her excellent work with food security in Latin America.

Professor Jenny Ruales Nájera did her PhD in Food engineering and Applied Nutrition with ISP support at Lund University.

- My interest in science started when I was a child and it was influenced by my mother who was a teacher and my parents always were supporting me do science and I become in love with chemistry.

Today Prof Ruales Nájera works at Escuela Politécnica Nacional at the Department of Food Science and Biotechnology in Quito, Ecuador. She is the Coordinator of the research group FOODOMICS which works in food science, natural products as well as energy and industrial security. She is also a member of the Food security network and member of the Academy of Science of Ecuador. Since 2017 she is a member of ISP Scientific Reference Group in Chemistry.

She has worked with ISP in 1984-2007 as a group leader of the ISP supported research group in nutritional biochemistry and biotechnology (ECU01), and in 1994-2007 as coordinator of the Latin American Network for Food Research (LANFOOD).

In addition, she has performed consultancy services for the Word Bank Ecuadorian Children Feeding Program, and coordinated the MSc and PhD program in food science at Escuela Politécnica Nacional since 1994.

- The long-term ISP support was very relevant for our research group, providing equipment as well as training for scientist, students and technicians. It was the key to open doors in the scientific community in the region and also in Europe so that we could apply for grants from the European Community, World bank, GTZ, OPCW etc. We got contacts to collaborate not only with Sweden, but also with France, United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, Germany in Europe and with Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Chile in Latin America.

- I am thankful to ISP and all directors, Rune Liminga, Malin Åkerblom and Peter Sundin, who provided support to our research group, who trusted our capability. My special thanks to Prof Rune Liminga who always supported us and he taught us how to find other opportunities of collaborations and get financial support for research. Once he told me something that always in my mind: to be good it is not enough, you have to be the best.

Professor Ruales Nájera´s research focuses on functional food and food security. She has been working with local materials, some of them underutilized. She and her colleagues are extracting and stabilizing bioactive components promising for food industry to add as ingredients to functional foods to prevent degenerative diseases and now also to provide better immunity. They also extract bioactive compounds of interest to food or pharmaceutical industry from by-products from the agroindustry, eg beta-carotenes from mango peel and after encapsulation used to fortify school children foods. This gives value to wastes and also to contribute to a better environment.

Regarding food safety she works on arsenic in rice, cadmium and lead in cocoa and aluminium and lead in milk.

- It is enjoyable to use science to help people. It is the case, by studying spontaneous fermentation of cocoa beans applying metagenomics, metabolomics, proteomic, we develop prototypes of fermenters and we distribute to the cocoa bean producers. They will obtain better quality of fermented cocoa beans with good taste and aroma, and it will also contribute that they can get better payment for the beans.

Professor Ruales Nájera, what is your future plans?

- The COVID-19 has affected a lot the research activities and due to the sanitary restrictions just few days a week are allow the students to work in the laboratories, therefore it take longer time to fulfill the planned activities. For the future, we have to take in consideration these limitations and also think in the financial support for students and also for the research assistance that thanks to them there is process in the projects. New ways of educations have to be implemented using online platforms, this is a challenge.

Keep up your excellent work Professor Ruales Nájera!