'Orange' Cauliflower Gene Eyed As Nutrition Booster
 

'Orange' Cauliflower Gene Eyed As Nutrition Booster

Can a gene from an orange cauliflower found three decades ago be the key to making food crops more nutritious?

Quite possibly, according to Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist Li Li. She's using cauliflower to identify genes and define molecular mechanisms that regulate nutrients in plant-based foods.

Li, a molecular biologist at the ARS U.S. Plant, Soil and Nutrition Laboratory (PSNL) in Ithaca, N.Y., is making significant headway using this gene--dubbed "Or" for the color orange--to induce high levels of beta-carotene in food crops. She and colleagues at Cornell University isolated the gene last year.

The research may make a huge impact on vitamin A deficiency, which has been reported to affect some 250 million children worldwide, according to Li. That's because beta-carotene, which gives orange carrots their color, is a carotenoid--fruit-and-vegetable compounds that the body converts into essential vitamins and uses as antioxidants beneficial to health. Humans convert it into vitamin A.

Li added that, in cauliflower, Or--which she described as a semi-dominant gene mutation--promotes high beta-carotene accumulation in various plant tissues that normally don't have carotenoids.

These studies can help researchers understand how carotenoid synthesis and accumulation are regulated in plants. This, in turn, can lead to strategies for increasing carotenoid content in food crops for improving human nutrition and health, she said.

The Or gene originates from an orange cauliflower plant found in a Canadian field nearly 30 years ago. ARS and Cornell scientists in Ithaca have been studying its genetics for about eight years.

Li's current work, which is partially detailed in the December issue of the publication Plant Cell, is part of a concentrated strategy at PSNL to apply genomics and related disciplines toward improving the nutritional quality and disease resistance of important food crops.

ARS is the USDA's chief scientific research agency.

http://www.worldhealth.net/p/orange...2007-03-01.html

The trouble is, many humans CANNOT make the conversion from beta-carotene to Vitamin A - children, old folks, and diabetics, principally. These people MUST obtain their vitamin A as vitamin A from animal sources. No amount of orange coloured veggies will do it.

neo_crone

I think what they will eventually find out is multiple forms of vitamin A. Probably at least one form from animals and another form from beta carotene.

My reason is this. They know that carotenoids (including beta carotene) greatly improve the eyes. They know that vitamin A greatly improve the eyes.

If carotenoids are not being converted to Vitamin A - then they must not be measuring the right form of vitamin A. Perhaps they are measuring the animal version of vitmain A and not the plant version.

The other problem about studies regarding beta carotene and vitamin A are that researchers that show positive studies usually use natural beta carotene, mix in other carotenoids and antioxidants.

I think that most researchers that want to show bad news - use synthetic beta carotene all by itself.