Peter Shewry
About him:
Peter Shewry is currently a project leader at Rothamsted Research and Emeritus Professor at the University of Reading. He leads a programme on the development, structure and composition of wheat grain focusing on improving the quality for human health, focusing on the content and composition of dietary fibre, phenolic acids and mineral micronutrients. He also leads a programme on improving the nitrogen use efficiency of wheat, in order to reduce the requirement of nitrogen fertiliser for producing breadmaking wheats. Over a 45 year career he has collaborated with many international scientists, including the EU FP7 HEALTHGRAIN project (Exploiting the bioactivity of European cereal grains for improved nutrition and health benefits).
He is the author of over 500 refereed papers in international journals, has edited or co-edited 19 books (including the 4th edition of Wheat: Chemistry and Technology and 2nd edition of Barley: Chemistry and Technology) and has written many major reviews and book chapters. He is currently Reviews Editor for Journal of Cereal Science.
In 2000 he was awarded the Thomas Burr Osborne medal by the AACC, in 2002 was the joint recipient (with Donald Kasarda) of the Rank Prize for Nutrition, and in 2016 the Clyde H Bailey medal by the ICC. He was elected Fellow of the ICC Academy in 2009, has received honorary doctorates from the Swedish Agricultural University (2007) and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (2008) and held the Francqui Chair at KU Leuven for 2016-7.
About his talks:
"Designing Future Wheat for Improved Health Benefits"
Wheat is a major source of nutrients for human health, but is mainly consumed as white flour which is depleted in many important components. We are therefore focusing on white flour, exploiting genetic variation to increase the contents of soluble and insoluble fibre, and combining a range of approaches to increase the amounts of bioavailable iron and zinc.
"Exploiting variation in grain structure and composition to improve wheat utilization"
Wheat is usually traded as a commodity, after division into classes based on protein content and texture. However, this broad classification ignores vast variation in grain composition, both between genotypes and within individual grains. Exploiting this variation by innovative processing should allow the production of a wider range of specialist flours with compositions optimised for specific end uses (including health benefits).