Prof.  Ebru  YAŞA KAFKAS
University of Çukurova,  Turkey

Title: Why blueberries?

Abstract:

Small berry fruits, like blueberries, are popular due to their appearance, easy to eat and unique taste. Blueberries belong to the Cyanococcus section of the Ericaceae family. They are known to be one of the richest sources of natural antioxidants. Blueberries are a flavorful and colorful fruit, known for their health benefits attributed to numerous bioactive compounds with various therapeutic effects. The research aims to understand the metabolic and genetic factors that influence the nutritional and sensory qualities of blueberries. They can be consumed as either fresh or processed such as snacks, desserts, fruit salads, and with ice cream, yogurt or procesed products such as frozen berries into conserves, purees and juices, dried fruit.

They are rich in organic acids phenolic compounds that protect human against a wide variety of diseases since raspberry have high antioxidant activity. In this review, blueberry worldwide production trend and effect of blueberry nutrient content on human health will be discussed. This review could be beneficial for future studies will be conducted on blueberry production and its nutrient content.

Biography:

Ebru Yaşa KAFKAS completed her MsC and PhD at the University of Çukurova (Adana, Turkey). Her PhD was on “Identification of aroma compounds of some strawberry genotypes and relationship between aroma compounds and some fruit quality characteristics”. During his PhD, worked at Newe Ya’ar Research Center and Volcani Research Center (Israel) years from 1998 to 2000 as visiting scientist and worked on “Flavour and Aroma Formation in Strawberry Fruits (F. xananassa), GIF (ISRAEL-GERMANY), Research Grant G591-113.12/98) and Improved Fruit Set and Elimination of Fruit Deformation in Strawberry via Biotechnological Manipulation, BARD (ISRAEL-GERMANY) Projects, 1999. Lately she joined international projects and she is the National Coordinator of these projects: COST Action: CA15223 - Modifying plants to produce interfering RNA (2016-2021); PRIMA project: Developing new strategies to protect strawberry crop in Mediterranean countries (2019-2022); “Screening and functional analysis of blueberry VcGly I genes related to drought defense” (TUBİTAK 2019-2020); H2020-SFS-2018-2020 project: Genetic resources and pre-breeding communities. She currently holds the position of Professor of the University of Çukurova, Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Horticulture and also a member of Biotechnology Department at the same university. Her scientific interests focus on breeding on fruit quality and to improve fruits rich in health related compounds.