Luigi Guarino

January 13, 2011

Blue maize and its proteins

I’ve only just subscribed to the INFOODS Electronic Discussion Group, so I’m not sure how active it is, but two interesting queries came in yesterday, so I’m hopeful. One was about how much bioavailable iron there may be in the juice you get when cooking beans. The other is about infraspecific differences in nutritional quality, which is a topic close to our agrobiodiversity-fueled heart. I’ll take the liberty of quoting the query in full, in case any of our readers has an answer:

Does anyone have the amino acid profile (PHE specifically) for blue corn ¹? Looking at the USDA info for corn flour, whole-grain, *white* and corn flour, whole-grain, *yellow* they both have the same amount of protein (6.93 gm) and PHE (340 mg) per 100 gm. The *blue* corn whole-grain flour, however, has 8.75 gm pro/100 gm and the amino acid values are not listed.

I found a journal article that states blue corn is a more complete source of protein than either yellow or white and has elevated levels of lysine and tryptophan as compared to the other 2 (~0.8 mg/gm more LYS; doesn’t say amount for TRP). Could the additional protein be coming from the higher LYS and TRP and the PHE be the same as white/yellow or might the % PHE be significantly different based on percentages/amounts of the other amino acids?

Regards,

Belkys Prado RD CSP LD
Metabolic Nutritionist
St Joseph’s Children’s Hospital of Tampa
Tampa, FL

January 13, 2011January 13, 2011

Nibbles: Heiser & Chambers, Quinoa, Books, Grafting eggplants, Vitamin D, Pitaya, Cassava, Beetroot, Worldwatch, BBSRC

Celebrating Charles Heiser and Bob Chambers.
Quinoa coming into its own in Bolivia.
Earthscan and Bioversity International team up for new Issues in Agricultural Biodiversity book series.
Crop wild relatives not just useful to breeders, eggplant edition.
Vitamin D 101 in pictures.
Improving pitaya.
Cassava production trends in Africa in 28 slides. Twenty slides too many, but it’s always good to have the data.
Beetroot’s colour deconstructed.
Worldwatch’s 2011 State of the World was released yesterday. Gives a “compelling look at the global food crisis, with particular emphasis on global innovations that can help solve a worldwide problem.” At $19.95 a pop. But supporting material available. Here comes the commentary.
The genebank at the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council gets its 15 minutes of fame.

January 12, 2011January 12, 2011

Millets go back home

You’ll have to take my word for it, unless you read Chinese, or can make head or tail out of the Google translation of the announcement on the Environmental Information E-News website, but it looks like a number of accessions of Setaria millet from the USDA collection have been “repatriated” to some Taiwanese hilltribe communities who had lost them over the years. Me, I’d have asked for stuff from other places too while I was at it, what with climate change and all, but anyway. There will apparently be more on the project on the website of the Department of Agronomy, National Taiwan University, but again you’ll need some language skills to get the full benefit. Prof. Warren H.J. Kuo is the man in charge. The word is that Taiwan’s Public Television Service will upload something in English to youtube very soon. Looking forward to that.

January 12, 2011January 12, 2011

Greening fish and chips

What’s happening to the Great British Fish and Chips Meal? On a recent trip to Whitby on the Yorkshire coast I found that not only is the fish sustainable now.

But the whole thing is also GMO-free.

It didn’t use to be this way. What next? Organic heirloom potatoes? Acid-free paper to eat them from? Hardly bears thinking about.

January 12, 2011January 12, 2011

Nibbles: Neanderthal, CWR, Bioinformatics, Svalbard, Old Armenian wine, Maple syrup, Plants databases, Bananas in trouble

Neanderthals cooked and ate plants, but did not use toothbrushes.
Andy Jarvis talks up a crop wild relatives storm.
Towards an information infrastructure for the global genebank system. Maybe.
Aussies send seeds to wrong Global Seed Vault.
Oldest winery found in Armenia. Search still ongoing for oldest wino. Maybe in Lebanon?
Oh, to be at the Bigleaf Maple Syrup Festival!
The most important thing to happen in botany in, what, a couple of weeks? Ah, but the backlash is here.
Colbert finally works out why his high school teacher put condoms on bananas. Here’s his informant.