Volunteers are vital to the success of the Heritage Food Crops Research Trust.
Embedded in its Whanganui community, with a vision of helping members of the local and wider global communities to enhance their health and quality of life, is the Heritage Food Crops Research Trust.
This charitable trust has been established to research the early prevention and treatment of disease through the medicinal properties of plant-based food.
When you arrive at the Research Trusts HQ centre in Springvale Rd, the first thing you will notice is the volunteers.
They are locals who give freely of their time to assist in keeping the work the trust is doing ticking along and who are the glue to this whole organisation.
No matter what time of the year or how miserable the weather is, there is always work to be done and these volunteers are there either pruning, planting, weeding, mowing or seed-sorting.
The gardens and projects are brightly named thanks to various local schools who have visited and come up with inspired names for various garden plots.
Some volunteers’ artistic talent has turned these names into bright colourful plaques.
This is a community working together.
Mark Christensen is the Research Director for the trust, having worked for 20 years through the New Zealand Tree Crops Association Central Districts Branch.
He instigated and then began coordinating the research on heritage apples and their anti-cancer properties, and the Monty’s Surprise variety.
He manages the trust’s research property and facilities in Whanganui and coordinates the activities of the growers, researchers and scientists working on the trust’s projects.
There are local forms of fruits, grains and vegetables scattered throughout the world that have recognised superior health benefits, based on robust research.
The trust’s role has been identifying and researching local varieties, particularly heritage ones, for prospective benefits.
It has also imported a range of traditional cultivars for assessment.
Using the trust’s Whanganui facilities as a base, research has in particular focused on the following food crops, apples, and tomatoes, two of the most widely consumed foods in the world.
Whenever you visit, you will notice tunnel houses full of various crops being trialled, whether with tomatoes, beans, or honeyberries.
The trust says it is continually working to identify dietary options that may prove to be low-cost anti-cancer strategies.
Specific foods may contain bioactive compounds that target hereditary cancer cells and prevent them from initiating a disease process or limiting their rate of proliferation.
Already research initiated through the trust has led to the identification of natural food compounds of particular benefit.
These include the high levels of cancer-fighting properties in a unique seedling apple variety and certain golden/orange heritage tomatoes.
This apple was a chance discovery that has led the trust on a huge journey, one that has included involvement from the other side of the world.
It happened in April 2000 when Christensen and friends discovered a unique apple tree in a remote part of the central North Island.
The first step on the journey was the identification of Monty’s Surprise as a high-health variety, and secondly with the distribution of these apple trees throughout the Whanganui region and further afield.
Interest in Monty’s Surprise grafted apple tree is getting greater every year, with demand outstripping supply.
Christensen said, “If people in New Zealand — and eventually throughout the world —ate more high-health apples such as Monty’s Surprise, over time this would have the effect of lowering the overall incidence of chronic disease within our communities.”
Research in New Zealand and internationally is ongoing, including a recent article by Massey University’s School of Food and Advanced Technology PhD student Linda Nezbedova, Phytochemicals from Monty’s Surprise apple are absorbed in humans, increase plasma antioxidant response, and inhibit lung and breast cancer proliferation in vitro.