- Superveggies and wonderfruit
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UW food researchers are working to make your corn
sweeter, your carrots healthier, and your cranberries
cranberrier. Now please pass the orange cucumber.
If you could steer a squeaky-wheeled grocery cart through the advances of UW-Madison food research, the produce section would be a must-stop. Scientists here have helped create more succulent sweet corn; bigger and redder cranber-ries; carrots enriched with added beta-carotene; and tomatoes with extra sweetness. You might even find an orange cucumber. Through a mix of old-fashioned plant breeding and modern biotechnology, researchers are solving agricultural problems for Wisconsin farmers and improving what ends up on the supper table. Take the work of horticulturist Philipp Simon. He specializes in boosting the nutritional content in carrots by adding beta-carotene, an important source of vitamin A. The health benefits of beta-carotene, the pigment that makes carrots orange, include reducing cancer risk and high blood pressure. Children deficient in vitamin A are more susceptible to measles and mumps. Simon's "Beta III" carrot gives consumers more of what makes carrots healthy. Developed by breeding regular Midwestern carrots with high beta-carotene varieties from Asia, Simon was able to triple the total beta carotene content. The Beta III is slated for trials in vitamin A-deficient parts of the world. Sweet corn slathered in butter - one of the finer indulgences of summer - is a research obsession for Bill Tracy. The agronomist has developed 15 varieties, some of which are used commercially in Wisconsin. Many have improved flavor and tenderness. "Flavor is my top concern," says Tracy, a self-described "sweet corn chauvinist" who covets the vegetable above all others. "If we don't care about flavor, we might as well grow field corn." Tracy's varieties also can be planted earlier in the season, to meet the high consumer demand for early-summer sweet corn. His ultimate goal is to develop sweet corn that can be planted as early as field corn, a full month ahead of schedule. One project has him cross-breeding sweet corn with a corn that's native to the frigid high altitudes in Mexico. Another up-and-coming crop research project concerns cranberries, of which Wisconsin is a top producer. Horticulturist Brent McCown says state farmers have a shorter growing season than their counterparts in the Northeast, and consequently, cranberries here are typically smaller and have less color intensity. McCown selectively breeds plants for a shorter growing season that are better suited for central and northern Wisconsin. McCown uses biotechnology to give cranberry plants a natural defense against insects - a development that could almost eliminate the need for insecticide treatments. He has success-fully introduced a gene from Bacillus thuringiensis - Bt for short - into the genetic makeup of plants that could provide insect resistance over the life of the plant.
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McCown says their process for Bt-altering plants, patented by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, shows promise in the second year of field tests. "We have farmers ready to replant as soon as these are available to reduce their reliance on chemicals," McCown says. Biotechnology is bearing fruit on other fronts as well. Botanist Thomas Sharkey worked with the California company Calgene to test a tomato with higher sugar content that would be better for canning. The tomato uses genes from sweet corn to produce the extra sugar. Sharkey helped perfect an approach that not only produced 10 percent higher sugar content, but 50 percent higher per-acre yield. On a more fundamental level, two UW-Madison botanists made a genetic discovery that could one day lead to fruits and veggies with a longer shelf-life in the refrigerator. Anthony Bleecker and Eric Schaller found the first hormone receptor responsible for aging and ripening in plants, a process that governs everything from bananas turning brown to flowers shedding their petals. Plants may one day be engineered to ripen more slowly, which could reduce huge losses of spoiled food crops. But what about those orange cucumbers? That's another creation of Phil Simon, who enhanced the beta-carotene content in cucum-bers through selective breeding. It's not meant to be a freak of nature, he says. Cucumbers with
Bleecker (right) and Schaller found a hormone in tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables that controls rotting, which may help botanists breed food that stays fresh longer.
more beta-carotene could offer a sustainable vitamin A source in developing countries, where deficiencies still causes blindness in children. "Consumer acceptance of an orange cucumber would probably take some time - not to mention courage," Simon says.
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