KIU Western Campus – PhD candidate, Ajagun – Ogunleye Olufemi Mulkah, from the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, offered a PhD defence, also known as a Viva Voce presentation, on the anti-ageing effect of moringa oleifera, commonly known as the moringa tree, and the ananas sativa, the pineapple fruit, in the Engineering Boardroom of the Western campus today.

Ajagun – Ogunleye’s PhD would be the University's first PhD in this particular programme and seeks to evaluate the role of moringa and the pineapple in the age-related functional decline during exposure to stress in a model of the common fruit fly. In her presentation, she shows how common fruit flies were subjected to a range of experiments to see how the two plants would affect their longevity, fertility, climbing ability, cognitive function and cell stress response.

As a result, the survival times of the flies were increased in relation to flies not exposed to the two plants, as it showed that pineapple and moringa impacted positively on the flies’ lifespan and fertility. According to her research, moringa also has several other benefits like improving memory, ability to improve learning and improved brain activity, which all have the ability to slow the ageing process.

The research provides unique information on the anti-ageing effect of moringa and pineapple as a potential future anti-ageing regimen. The research also recommends extending the analysis in the search for more anti-ageing mechanisms of the two plants.