Kristian Holst Laursen

Short presentation

My scientific focus areas are plant nutrition, food quality, analytical chemistry and chemometrics. I have contributed to several studies aimed at unravelling the functional roles of nutrients in plant metabolism. I have also utilized my background in fundamental plant science for investigating the quality and authenticity of plant based food products. In these studies analytical methods have been developed for authenticating the geographical and agricultural origin of plants.

I have extensive experience with development of analytical methods for multi-element and stable isotope analysis of biological material. During the past decade I have gained major experience with ICP-OES, ICP-MS and IR-MS (also compound-specific IR-MS) and some experience with HPLC and MC-ICP-MS. I am a skilled user of various chemometric tools for multivariate data analysis. I have major experience with planning, conducting and evaluating rigidly controlled plant experiments under field conditions, in greenhouses and climate chambers.

I am leading the Plant Nutrients and Food Quality research group where we aim to bridge plant and food science using advanced analytical chemistry. Food quality is a complex trait covering a wide array of characteristics including nutrient content and bioavailability, protein level, amino acid composition and the presence of potentially toxic compounds such as heavy metals. We develop analytical methods that enable us to investigate key factors controlling the quality of plant based food and feed. Our goal is to provide new knowledge and recommendations regarding sustainable and resource efficient plant production that simultaneously delivers safe, authentic and nutritious food.

Research projects:

Plant-microbiome interactions in modern and ancient barley (2019-2022) 

INTACT Food: Implementation of Nuclear Techniques for Authentication of Foods with High-Value Labelling Claims (2019-2024)

IsoTracer: Compound-specific isotope ratio analysis for tracing nutrients in the soil-plant system (2018-2021).

SoilTracker: "Forensic toolkit for fingerprinting soil". Funded by Innovation Fund Denmark (2017-2020). 

COM-ISO – Individual postdoctoral grant from the Danish Council for Independent Research, Technology and Production Sciences with the project: “Compound-specific isotope ratio analysis as a novel and powerful tool for authentication of plant products” (2014-2017).

FoodIntegrity – “Assuring the integrity of the food chain” (2014-2019), FP7 EU project, partner in several WPs.

AuthenticFood – “Fast methods for authentication of organic plant based foods” (2011-2015), FP7 ERA-NET EU project, project manager.