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Natural Products and Human Health
- Extension and Outreach -

Extension and Outreach Highlights

Internationally

  1. Working with small-holder farmers and vulnerable rural communities in sub-Sahara Africa to improve cultivation, marketing, and sales of plant-based natural products for the cosmetic, flavor, fragrance, medicinal plant and dietary supplemental industries
  2. Training courses in Screens-to-Nature technology for botanical therapeutics discovery in 13 developing countries and organizing international seminars dedicated to plants and human health
  3. Improving nutrition and health in Zambia
  4. Validating ethnobotanical knowledge of Native Americans in Alaska and North Dakota
  5. Training courses in the commercialization of natural products (botanicals and medicines)
  6. Training of methods in vouchering of source materials in ethnobotanical and medicinal plant studies

Domestically

  1. Improving nutritional and/or sensory properties of plants
  2. Working with US growers to improve their production of health promoting herbs and in the introduction of ethnic vegetables, greens and herbs
  3. Introducing new nutritionally rich plants
  4. Improving the aroma and horticultural and post-harvest characteristics of culinary herbs
  5. Educating gardeners and the public on the role of plants in human health and medicine
  6. Participating in community outreach programs about issues relating to indoor mold exposure

Collaborative Research Projects and Centers

  1. ASNAPP, Agribusiness in sustainable natural plant products (www.asnapp.org)
  2. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded project on improving nutrition and health in Zambia (with North Carolina State University and University of Zambia)
  3. Chrysler Herbarium, Rutgers (http://herbarium.rutgers.edu/)
  4. EOSHI, Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences Institute, Rutgers University-UMDNJ (http://eohsi.rutgers.edu/)
  5. GIBEX.org, Global Institute for Bioexploration (https://gibex.org)
  6. GIBEX-related contacts and projects with universities in 26 countries (with University of North Caroliana and University of Illinois)
  7. National Center for Botanicals and Metabolic Syndrome, with Louisiana State University (http://ods.od.nih.gov/Research/Dietary_Supplement_Research_Centers.aspx)
  8. Native American Health and Government Organizations in Alaska on traditional botanical knowledge and communal health, with University of North Carolina
  9. NIH T32 Training Grant in Botanical Approaches to Combat Metabolic Syndrome, with Louisiana State University
  10. NUANPP, New Use Agriculture and Natural Plant Products Program (newuseag.rutgers.edu)
  11. PFID/NP, Partnership for Food Industry Development/ Natural Products
  12. Rutgers' Initiative on Sensory Sciences and Innovation
  13. United Tribes Technical College in North Dakota on traditional botanical knowledge, with University of North Carolina
  14. NIH/FIRCA award, Interaction of ricin A chain with the ribosomal stalk with Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Poland

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