Nutrition center director sees opportunities touting benefits of regional agricultural products

As the University of North Dakota seeks to expand its research base, it need only look a short distance east of the campus to find a major, big-scale, and internationally know partner: the Grand Forks Human Nutrition Research Center of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

With an annual budget of $9 million, the Center employs 14 scientists and a staff of 145. It conducts basic and applied research to elucidate the roles of minerals and other nutrients in supporting the health of Americans. The goal is to reduce chronic disease and promote health by helping to maintain the quality of food.

Since the facility opened in 1970, it has enjoyed a congenial relationship with UND, but one that President Charles Kupchella and School of Medicine and Health Sciences Dean H. David Wilson have long hoped to expand. When it was learned that Dr. Gerald Combs, a collaboration-minded nutrition researcher and professor at Cornell, was considering an invitation to assume the directorship of the Center, they encouraged him to accept. So did the North Dakota Congressional delegation, among others.

Combs took the job. Today he has become, as expected, a high-profile advocate of new partnerships, working not only with Vice President Alfonso at UND but also with North Dakota State University, private trade organizations, and others interested in the nutritional benefits of crops grown in the Northern Great Plains.

Combs says the selenium-rich soils of the region offer possibilities to develop healthful crops such as wheat, barley, and buckwheat. He envisions work to develop the solid scientific basis needed for the health claims of such foods. He sees similar opportunities to develop other regional products, including beans, flax, beef, and bison, all with various health-promoting characteristics.

In his own research, Combs has published widely on nutritional biochemistry of minerals and vitamins, especially selenium, vitamin E, and factors affecting their metabolic functions.