The 11th International Workshop on Anthocyanins & Betalains (IWA&B 2024) will be held in at The University of Leeds in the county of Yorkshire. Yorkshire is known as “God’s Own Country” and is the largest county in the United Kingdom, home to leading University cities and miles of unspoilt countryside, including The Yorkshire Three Peaks.

Yorkshire gave to the world Yorkshire Tea, Yorkshire Pudding, Wensleydale Cheese, Stainless Steel and The Brontë Sisters. The world’s first football club started in Yorkshire, as did the international retailer Marks and Spencer. It is also home to the Largest Railway Museum in the World and York Minster.

The University of Leeds was established in 1904 and is one of the largest universities in the UK. The University is part of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities and are renowned globally for the quality of our research and teaching, ranked in the top 75 universities in the world. More than 39,800 students are currently studying here at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Anthocyanins are well known for their great diversity of colours, spanning practically the whole visible spectrum, from orange and red through to purple and blue hues. Due to their wide distribution in nature and structural diversity they have hit headlines and are linked to a range of health benefits and diverse functions in plants. Over the years, the scientific community has been focusing on these amazing molecules trying to understand their biosynthesis, properties, bioactivities and biological relevance, and possible applications. Given their relative abundance in the diet and their chemical and biological versatility, they represent a rich source of health promoting properties and only now are we truly beginning to understand how their absorption might relate to bioactivity.

Similarly, novel anthocyanin-enriching techniques are opening new opportunities for several applications in various industry sectors for manufacturing food and non-food products including their potential use as food additives, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

Since the year 2000, the International Workshop on Anthocyanins (IWA) has been the major bi-annual focus for cutting edge anthocyanin research dissemination, but has been disrupted since the last conference in 2019 due to the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Following on from the successful introduction of betalains at IWA2019 conference, they are also fully included in IWA&B 2024. Betalains are a class of red and yellow pigments found in specific plants where they replace anthocyanins. The particular shades of red to purple are distinctive and unlike that of anthocyanin pigments. Betalains include reddish to violet betacyanins and yellow to orange betaxanthins.

IWA&B 2024 is an opportunity for academics and industrials to establish contacts with other scientists working with anthocyanins and betalains worldwide.