Potatoes can be good for you

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.