American Scientist

A growing body of evidence supports the roles of phytochemicals from fruits and vegetables, in meeting nutritional requirements and preventing chronic diseases. These phytochemicals are also appealing to consumers as natural food colorants or supplements. But breeding for nutritional value largely still relies on selection for the content of certain phytochemicals, and factors such as the actual activity of the phytochemicals is less known. For example, the chemical structure of phytochemicals (a trait under genetic control) can modulate their ability to be released from the plant and absorbed, and this trait is independent from total overall phytochemical content. Massimo Iorizzo of North Carolina State University and his collaborators have demonstrated that within the same crop, variation for traits exists across different cultivars and is often associated with chemical structure rather than total content. In this talk, Iorizzo discusses the need for a DNA-based breeding strategy to develop new fruits and vegetable varieties that have improved health benefits.