Michael Heinrich
Southern Cross Plant Science Center, Southern Cross University

There is a considerable demand for high value health and other valuable foods like goji berries, mangosteen or açai.  Southern Cross Plant Science addresses such complex research challenges. It was formed in early 2011 by merging existing strong research traditions within Southern Cross University in the areas of crop plant science, plant genomics, phytochemistry, ethnopharmacology and health research. It enables us to investigate and improve existing crops as well as developing new useful medicinal and food plants and high value plant products.
There is a continuous emphasis on securing high quality and safe products with adequate health claims. Developing such new high value products offers unique scientific opportunities and challenges. These consumer products are at the end of a long and often complex value chain involving primary producers or collectors, middlemen, manufacturers and other stakeholders. 
Recent research in my group has focused on metabolomic approaches to understand this chemical complexity. For example we recently conducted a metabolomic study of 37 saw palmetto products, used in the treatment of Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH). Using proton-NMR spectroscopy and multi-variate statistical analysis we assessed the variability of these products, a robust and reproducible method was established and the results showed that it was possible to statistically differentiate between saw palmetto products that had been extracted under different conditions but not between products that used a similar extraction method. Principal Component Analysis was able to determine those products which had significantly different metabolites. Similarly we have studied the chemical complexity and bioactivity of Echinacea and Cannabis-based products. Overall, this approach shows the unique opportunities arising from the use of metabolomic approaches to the study of plant products from ‘seed to consumer’.