New food enhancements prove more palatable

Boosting protein in rice
Improving worldwide nutrition has been another central goal of recent research. Hari B. Krishnan, a molecular biologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in Columbia, Mo., said protein deficiency is a major concern in many developing countries, where people often depend on rice as their main food source. Most commonly grown rice varieties, he said, contain a protein content of between 6 percent and 9 percent. “If we can somehow increase that, even by 1 or 2 percent, that could be very important for the billions of people who consume rice.”

Krishnan and his collaborators at India’s Tamil Nadu Agricultural University may have succeeded by crossing two species for a completely different reason: to incorporate drought-resistance from a wild Indian variety into one commonly grown in Southeast Asia. When tested, the hybrid surprisingly boasted a protein content of 12.4 percent, significantly more than either parent. The hybrid, Krishnan said, could be used as a breeding line and crossed with popular varieties to maximize both cooking quality and nutritional value. The team has observed no downsides to the new hybrid, through tests are still ongoing with regard to yield and whether the high-protein trait can be maintained for several generations.

Krishnan said the most efficient way of adding new traits still often involves genetic engineering. Golden rice, for example, has been modified to contain a higher amount of beta-carotene. Despite the promise, however, “certainly, it’s not compatible with some countries” due to widespread opposition, he said.

Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist at the Cambridge, Mass.-based environmental organization Union of Concerned Scientists, said other advances in plant breeding have led to faster crosses under the banner of a technique called marker-assisted selection. Thanks in part to more accessible genetic information, the increased ability to tap naturally-occurring diversity in rice, corn and other food crops has yielded plants with higher iron and beta-carotene levels, for example — without the need for genetic modification.

Less opposition
GM WATCH, a United Kingdom-based organization that has aggressively campaigned against genetically modified food for the past decade, released a January report pointing out other fruitful efforts toward producing a salt-resistant wheat hybrid, parasite-resistant black-eyed pea plant and virus-resistant cassava variety, among recent examples, as further evidence that food enhancement need not rely on genetic engineering.

“There’s still a significant amount of resistance to genetically modified foods in Europe and Japan and other parts of the world,” Gurian-Sherman said. “But there’s been no opposition over using conventional breeding to produce the same traits.”

He cautioned that new breeding practices are not a panacea — “like any new technology” — but pointed out that because they’re largely unencumbered by public opposition or the approval process required of genetic modification, such techniques are sometimes yielding faster and more cost-effective end products. “When you use technology that uses products that are already part of the food supply, then the regulatory burden is much lower,” he said.

Indeed, researchers have revisited basic science within the past few months to demonstrate the surprising benefits of foods altered by simply cooking them. Alabama scientists, for example, found that boiling peanuts increases their antioxidant value above either roasted or raw ones, while Italian scientists concluded that steaming broccoli actually boosts its concentration of cancer-fighting compounds known as glucosinolates.

Now if only researchers could discover how to make vegetables as irresistible as ice cream.

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