FVSI VISION
Through ground-breaking, transdisciplinary discovery and outreach, the North Carolina State University Fruit and Vegetable Science Institute (FVSI) will pioneer a dramatic shift in the way the American public views and uses plant food crops – not merely as a source of nutrients and flavorful calories, but as a powerful resource for components that protect and enhance human health. Integrated research in metabolomics, biochemistry, pharmacogenomics, breeding and postharvest attributes will lead to development of mainstream fruit and vegetable produce with enhanced health benefits, and introduction of new or underappreciated crops and products, allowing consumers to make proactive, responsible dietary choices that benefit their own, and their family’s, health.
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Focus
- Our core focus, in collaboration with other universities, is nutrition and human health.
- NC State Research Faculty will determine optimal nutritional characteristics for various fruits and vegetables.
- Work with nutritional information to develop plants that meet the nutritional requirements.
- Determine how best to produce plants commercially.
- Work to Increase the yield of vegetable crops in diverse growth environments while at the same time improving nutritional quality.
- Continue to train the next generation of plant breeders.
- Work with geneticists who have developed many of the basic biological and statistical tools for mapping genes that influence horticulturally important traits to devise genetic systems for avoidance of plant diseases and insects, reducing farmers' dependence on pesticides.
- Use state-of-the art facilities to determine protein structures that mediate growth, resistance and nutrient production, and for molecular imaging of cellular function.