Fresh Ideas from ARS Nutrition Research
By Laura
McGinnis
March 5, 2008 Today, salads are more nutritious than
ever before, thanks in part to research conducted by the Agricultural Research
Service (ARS), the
U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief
scientific research agency.
Iceberg lettuce is the foundation for many garden salads, and ARS plant
breeders in Salinas, Calif., have developed an experimental technique to boost
its nutritional value. Scientists in the agency's
Crop
Improvement and Protection Research Unit in Salinas pried open the leaves
of iceberg lettuces as they grew, preventing the formation of tightly closed
heads.
With more surface exposed to sunlight, the lettuces accumulated twice as
much iron and calcium and five times as much vitamin C as typical icebergs. Now
the researchers are determining how to help developing plants store these
nutrients without changing the features that have made iceberg America's
favorite lettuce.
Everyone knows that carrot sticks are more nutritious than carrot cakes, but
fewer people know that they're also more nutritious than the carrots that were
eaten 30 years ago. That's because ARS scientists discovered a way to breed
carrots with high amounts of beta-carotene, an orange pigment that helps humans
make vitamin A. In fact, modern carrots have nearly 50 percent more
beta-carotene than their predecessors.
Scientists in the
ARS
Vegetable Crops Research Unit in Madison, Wis., helped raise beta-carotene
levels in carrots, and are now working to produce the same results in cucumbers
and melons. The same researchers are also using classical breeding methods to
raise levels of heart-healthy compounds in onions and garlic.
ARS scientists with the
Genetic
Improvement of Fruits and Vegetables Laboratory, part of the
Henry
A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, Md.,
developed tomato breeding lines to produce cherry tomatoes with enhanced
beta-carotene content. And colleagues at the
ARS
Western Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif., have been seeking genes
that cue tomatoes to produce another nutritious pigment: lycopene.
Read
more about this research in the March 2008 issue of Agricultural
Research magazine.