Science Spotlight with Dr. Jess Cooperstone

With April 22 being Earth Day, Foods for Health spoke with Dr. Jess Cooperstone to better understand the science behind quality produce as well as highlight the Food and Crop Improvement pillar.

With Earth Day being April 22, this month is a time to better understand the power of quality produce. What first inspired your work in horticulture and crop science, and what continues to motivate you today?

What we eat plays a huge role in our health. At the same time, most people are disconnected from food production, and eating well is often not that simple to do on the day-to-day. People eat what is accessible to them. If we can make it so those options are healthful, accessible, and tasty, we can really improve both health and quality of life. I’ve spent my career investigating putatively health beneficial compounds from plants, learning what governs their production in plants, and contributing to a better understanding of their activity in people.

What research tools and methods do you use to help advance horticulture and crop science?

My team works on broad topics spanning plant, food, and nutritional sciences, and as a result we use lots of different methods. At our core, we are analytical chemists, analyzing plants, foods, and biofluids to understand plant phytochemical accumulation, metabolism, using quantitative and untargeted metabolomics approaches. We are also regularly handling omics data (e.g., genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, microbiomics) which requires some computational skills. Our data analyses often use R (I love R, and those who want to learn more are welcome to join our OSU Code Club). Along with these tools and methods, we grow plants, process foods, do animal studies and conduct human clinical trials, all collaboratively. 

What excites you most about this research, and how do you see it shaping the future of horticulture and crop science?

There have been so many amazing advances that allow us to produce abundant food. I am really excited about a move to a time where we are as concerned about the quality of our food as the quantity. Improving the nutritional quality of our foods as this provides value to everyone, from farmers, to processors, and consumers.

How does interdisciplinary collaboration enhance your research, and what fields of expertise have helped advance your work? 

Doing this type of research is inherently interdisciplinary – it needs to be! It would be impossible for one person to have sufficient expertise across plant, food, nutrition, and biomedical sciences. Working in teams is one of my favorite things about academic research and allows us to accomplish more than any of us could individually. It allows me to train people who have both a broad and deep understanding of the problems they are trying to solve, with skills to solve new-to-us challenges. Plus, it’s much more fun!

As the faculty lead for Food and Crop Improvement with the Foods for Health leadership team, how does a campus-wide research initiative like FFH support and accelerate progress in this field? 

The community that Foods for Health serves is so broad – we have faculty in 11 colleges and 45 departments! We want to enable work surrounding improving the quality of crops and food. We plan to develop scientific teams to submit grants to specific calls, apply for training grants, develop curricular materials, and more! And the bigger diversity of ideas we have the better, so if this sounds interesting to you, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Foods for Health is here to help!