Jeremy blogged sometime back about the lack of variety-level nutritional data out there. And more recently we’ve had an exchange of comments on the limited extent to which potato germplasm collections have been screened for micronutrients. One reason is probably the fact that nutritional composition is difficult to measure. Well, today comes news from USDA of a rapid method of analysis that could spur the evaluation of agrobiodiversity — and breeding — for nutritional value. Some 100 wild and cultivated accessions have had their phytochemical profiles quantified by high-throughput liquid chromatography and mass spectroscopy. Apparently, it only takes 12 minuts per sample. As an example of the results, levels of folic acid varied as much as three-fold among 70 entries, and flavonoid levels 30-fold.
It’s fascinating all the little titbits that are coming through about varietal differences in nutritional composition…
In the UK anyway food analysis has traditionally been a very poorly funded area and so I guess it will continue to be the select product areas and select nutrients with the most commercial potential that get tested. As a nutritionist it would be great to have much more detailed information available about all the new foods and varietals that people are starting to eat (and the old ones they are starting to eat again!) but I’m not going to be holding my breath.
I guess the two disciplines have been working pretty much in isolation from each other until recently. Nutritionists have not been too interested in the possibility of differences among varieties and genetic resources people have not been too interested in nutritional composition. But that is definitely changing, on both sides.