Brenda Mionki

Brenda is currently a PhD student at the John Innes Centre, with collaboration with the Quadram Institute.

Her research focuses on improving tomato nutrition quality through biofortification. In particular, using gene editing techniques to enhance the accumulation of vitamin D in tomatoes. Part of Brenda’s PhD work involved the Vital-D human study which tested the bioavailability/efficacy of the gene edited tomatoes in raising vitamin D levels when consumed.

Her present work bridges plant science research with human nutrition which is important in addressing nutritional challenges such as vitamin D deficiency, which affects a huge amount of the people. Brenda hopes that Vitamin D biofortified tomatoes can be a reliable and sustainable plant source of vitamin D.