Jeremy says we sound like a broken record on the lack of agricultural thinking in biodiversity circles at times, and he’s right of course. More charitably, it could be thought of as judicious use of a leitmotif. In which case another one would certainly be the unfortunate dearth of information on nutritional composition at the variety or accession level, certainly as compared to morphological and agronomic information. The reason for that is that genetic resources scientists and breeders have been more interested in things like yield and disease resistance. That’s had consequences.
An article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (via FreshPlaza) a few days back pointed me to an interesting report commissioned by the Organic Centre which spelled out one of those consequences: diminishing nutrient value, taste and aroma.
Agriculture’s “almost single-minded focus on increasing yields created a blind spot” in nutritional content, said Brian Halweil, author of the Organic Center’s report, “Still No Free Lunch.”
Tell me about it. But things are changing. According to the article:
In July, at the annual meeting of the American Society for Horticultural Science, international horticulturalists and plant breeders gathered for the first time to discuss the problem.
They realized there is a way to reverse the decline in some, if not all crops, food researcher Davis ((Donald Davis of the University of Texas, who compared figures on nutrient content for dozens of fruits and vegetables spanning half a century and showed a 5-40% decline in minerals, vitamins and proteins.)) said. It’s already happening, albeit by accident.
What’s happening is that consumers and marketing people are telling breeders that they want carrots that are more orange, watermelons that are redder and pineapples that are sweeter. Breeders are obliging, and concidentally improving the nutritional value of these crops: higher vitamin A, lycopene and vitamin C in the above examples:
“All these just happened as a side effect to making crops more marketable,” Davis said. “If the consumers demand that nutritional content be added to their favorite food, it will happen.”
What may also happen — hopefully — is that more germplasm will be evaluated for these nutritional factors, especially if consumers move beyond asking for a carrot with a deeper colour and ask for one with more vitamin A. The work of Lois Englberger, for example, shows that that’s possible.
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