Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Se4All (Se-bioFORtified ALfaLfa for Se-enriched Dairy products)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2021-06-01 do 2023-11-30
About 3 billion people worldwide are affected by low intakes of the essential nutrient selenium (Se). The Se present in our diet its intimately linked with the amount of Se in soils, and therefore related crops, which can vary dramatically from region to region. Inadequate dietary Se intake is related to the risk of developing chronic degenerative diseases. The EU-funded Se4All project will explore Se-enriched edible plants as a solution to overcome this issue. Specifically, it will produce Se-enriched dairy products and cheese as functional foods through Se-biofortified alfalfa hay for feeding milking cows. Se will be applied directly to the plant (foliar application), instead of to the soil, in order to achieve transferability of the methodology to different regions.
The selenium formulation to be applied on alfalfa plants was designed, we have obtained Se-biofortified alfalfa by foliar co-application of different Se treatments together with a plant biostimulant. Our analyses have shown that the application of Se does not cause significant changes in the development of alfalfa plants. In that respect, we have not observed variations neither in the photosynthetic rate, nor in the biomass produced, nor in the nutritional value of the alfalfa forage, as compared with control conditions. On the other hand, we have also observed that foliar applications of Se had no significant effect on crown growth, but in some cases changes the ratio between leaves and stem which affects the palatable and nutritive aspect of the forage. Interestingly, the alfalfa’s crown is a transitional morphological structure located between the shoots and roots, which acts as a reserve organ and could have the capacity to accumulate Se. All these results show that the application of Se it is not detrimental for the nutritional properties of the obtained Se-biofortified forage which is encouraging further studies in field applications.
Quantification and speciation of selenium by indirect speciation, HPLC-MS, and direct speciation by synchrotron-based spectroscopic techniques is almost finished, thus, the final formula that will be applied to the experimental fields will be designed
On April 18th 2022 Alfalfa (cv PROINTA Super Monarca GR 9) was planted: Field experiment will be conducted over a period of two growing seasons (autumn-winter and spring-summer) at the experimental farm of the Rafaela Agricultural Experiment Station of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA).
Project website www.se4allproject.eu has been designed, also twitter profile (@Se4all1), linkedIn (Se4allproject.eu) and YouTube Channel (@se4all comunication) have been created.
Quantification and speciation of selenium by indirect speciation, HPLC-MS, and direct speciation by synchrotron-based spectroscopic techniques is almost finished, thus, the final formula that will be applied to the experimental fields will be designed
On April 18th 2022 Alfalfa (cv PROINTA Super Monarca GR 9) was planted: Field experiment will be conducted over a period of two growing seasons (autumn-winter and spring-summer) at the experimental farm of the Rafaela Agricultural Experiment Station of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA).
Project website www.se4allproject.eu has been designed, also twitter profile (@Se4all1), linkedIn (Se4allproject.eu) and YouTube Channel (@se4all comunication) have been created.
At this stage, some promising results have been obtained as the alfalfa treated with selenium shows higher selenium content, and also an increse of the organic selenium content has been observed. Thus, cows will be feed with Selenium-enriched alfalfa and we expect to obtain milk enriched with selenium in order to prepare cheese with higher nutritional properties.