Blog Transforming food systems through tools, data, training and global collaboration to improve understanding of edible biodiversity
The Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) is advancing food science by decoding the complex molecular composition of foods to address critical global issues in health, sustainability, and food security. At COP16 on biodiversity, PTFI leaders and partners emphasized the initiative’s transformative role in mapping nutrients and exploring edible biodiversity. The event highlighted the need for biodiversity not only in diets but also across agricultural landscapes to improve nutrition, resilience and livelihoods worldwide.
Understanding the intricate world within our food is crucial to addressing today’s most pressing global challenges, the health of people and planet, climate change, and food security. The Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) seeks to bridge these topics by delivering a comprehensive understanding of the elements that make up our food and the interconnected factors shaping their quality. The PTFI is a science-to-action initiative of the Rockefeller Foundation that is co-managed by the American Heart Association and the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT with technology led by Verso Biosciences and an ecosystem of global partners and funders. This initiative connects agriculture and health to unlock knowledge about what is in our food, the drivers of changes in food quality, and the ways we can use these insights to benefit people and the planet.
John de la Parra - Director of the Rockefeller Foundation's Food Initiative - remarked: “At this COP, we have seen how deeply our food systems are intertwined with the planet’s biodiversity and the wisdom of Indigenous communities who have stewarded it for generations. By advancing tools and data to reveal the molecular complexity of our foods, the Periodic Table of Food Initiative empowers us to draw on this rich biodiversity for resilient, nourishing food systems. This work goes beyond what’s on our plates; it’s about protecting agricultural landscapes, supporting Indigenous knowledge, and fostering global resilience for a healthier, more sustainable future.”
At a PTFI session during COP16 on Biodiversity, Maya Rajasekharan - the Alliance's Managing Director for Africa - and Gina Kennedy - Principal Scientist at the Alliance - co-hosted a side event at the Food & Agriculture Pavilion. Carlo Fadda - Director of Agrobiodiversity for Food and Agriculture at the Alliance - gave the opening remarks: “All of us understand the crises of climate, health, and biodiversity loss. Transforming food systems to be healthier, more resilient, and equitable is essential to achieving global goals such as the SDGs. The PTFI is an innovative collaboration at the intersection of agriculture, nutrition and environment. By mapping nutrients and exploring edible biodiversity, PTFI seeks to unlock knowledge on food composition from farm to fork.”
During the session, Maya Rajasekharan provided context for the attendees, remarking that PTFI was initiated more than three years ago through the vision of the Rockefeller Foundation, combining global health and agricultural perspectives. With a pioneering approach, PTFI aims to deepen our understanding of food’s biomolecular composition, going beyond traditional nutrient labels to uncover thousands of unique proteins, carbohydrates, and other compounds - often referred to as the “dark matter” of food.
To scale the impact of this work, PTFI has developed standardized tools in metabolomics, lipidomics and ionomics, along with metadata fields on food system attributes. PTFI has built a global platform collaborating with nine centers of excellence and a growing network of national and partner labs to make these advanced analytical tools and resulting data widely accessible. PTFI’s open-data repository now includes analyses of 500 foods from over 230 species. PTFI seeks to build capacity of the generation and application of this data through initiatives such as FoodEDU and the 'Good Food Fellows' that are building a new generation of scientists to advance global food composition knowledge. Alongside its research, PTFI is committed to Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) compliance, ensuring ethical and legal standards in global research.
Jenny Gallo - Post-doctoral Fellow with the Alliance - talked about PTFI’s focus on mapping edible biodiversity, capturing rich metadata and ensuring compliance with ABS principles. Through a selection of culturally and regionally significant foods - many of which do not appear in existing global databases - PTFI identified over 1,650 unique foods, including nearly 1,000 unlisted in USDA or FAO databases. Now, 500 of these foods are publicly accessible in PTFI’s MarkerLab platform, which hosts data on thousands of molecular compounds to shed light on the “dark matter” of food composition. With over 40 standardized metadata fields, PTFI enables insights into how factors such as climate and farming practices influence food quality based on biomolecular composition and food system attributes. By integrating ABS principles and fostering equitable partnerships with Indigenous communities, PTFI is pioneering a global approach to open, ethical food science.
Andrés Jaramillo - Scientific Director from iOmicas Institute (one of the nine PTFI Centers of Excellence around the world) - talked about PTFI’s work on tropical fruit and beans, examining these food at fundamental levels from DNA and proteins to metabolites. This work helps us to understand functional interactions in human health, emphasizing the need for advanced analytical tools. In the case of Colombia, the country has a vast diversity of native fruits, many with unique health benefits. PTFI is validating these claims with scientific evidence, finding compounds that may support traditional uses but challenge popular perceptions.
For instance, PTFI's research on native chontaduro (Bactris gasipaes) found aphrodisiac compounds mostly in the fruit's seeds and skin, which are not commonly consumed, and uncovered a high Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio in the seeds, highlighting the need for informed dietary decisions. On the other hand, an analysis of 18 fruits revealed high concentrations of beneficial compounds such as hydroquinidine and ursolic acid, associated with anti-aging and anti-inflammatory effects, showing the health-promoting potential of these fruits. PTFI’s work with the Alliance's Future Seeds genebank includes in-depth protein analysis across various bean varieties, identifying essential amino acids and unique proteins that contribute to human nutrition and crop resilience, supporting climate-adapted crop breeding. Finally, through the Good Food Fellows Program, Food EDU and PTFI are building capacity to study diet-related health issues - including Type 2 diabetes - in Colombian communities. Graduate students are engaging in dietary analysis, aiming to tailor interventions for better health outcomes.
“We learned in high school that we have about 118 elements in the chemical periodic table; out of those, 55 are natural elements, out of those, 22 compose a living organism. That's a relatively small fraction, but the possible permutations out of these are mind-blowing. The same thing is going to happen here for the PTFI. Once we get to the thousands of metabolites and proteins, then you need to look not only at their individual function but how they interact to regulate an organism within an environment, within an ecosystem” said Jaramillo.
It takes a large community of practice to map the food quality of edible biodiversity. That’s why after the presentations, the event continued with a panel of other projects that have synergies with the PTFI, including Roland Schafleitner from the World Vegetable Center who talked about the African vegetable biodiversity rescue plan; Raquel Santiago, Professor at the University of Goiás in Brazil and lead of the Biodiversity for food and nutrition initiative in Brazil; Andy Jarvis, Director of Future of Food with the Bezos Earth Fund; and Mauricio Diazgranados, Chief Science Officer and Dean of Science at the New York Botanical Gardens. With these four experts, attendees learned about their work on biodiversity that impacts both environmental and human health, and discovered concrete examples of boosting consumption of local and neglected underutilized species (NUS).
Gina Kennedy concluded the event, remarking on the importance of dietary diversity on our plates, on farms and in fields: “Let's not have a race to the bottom, let's allow all edible biodiversity to bring us up to better livelihoods for farmers and better nutrition for people and a healthier planet”.
We are grateful for the support of The Periodic Table of Food Initiative (PTFI) by The Rockefeller Foundation, the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, Seerave Foundation, Fourfold Foundation, Atria Health Collaborative, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
