Source: Digest - Crop & Food Research's quarterly newsletter - Issue 54

A new brand of super-vegetables, with the potential to prevent deadly diseases such as cancer, may soon be available on supermarket shelves following production and marketing trials.

Fresh broccoli high in a compound known to have cancer-fighting properties is being used in the first trial and other vegetables will follow soon, says Crop & Food Research chief executive Paul Tocker.

“The Vital Vegetables® programme aims to produce vegetables rich in nutrients that help to prevent cancer, heart disease and tackle the ageing process,” he says.

Scientists are identifying and developing vegetable cultivars with advanced levels of beneficial nutrients – and then finding the best ways to grow, harvest, package, store and cook those vegetables so they retain their value.

“These elite vegetables will be tastier, fresher and have higher levels of healthy phytochemicals than they are already known for,” says Mr Tocker. “People who eat them will be assured of receiving scientifically validated levels of beneficial nutrients.”

The Vital Vegetables® programme sees the vegetable industries in New Zealand and Australia working with research providers to build a future based on high-value, knowledge-intensive products and services. This project has five parties: Horticulture New Zealand, AUSVEG, Crop & Food Research, Department of Primary Industries Victoria, and Horticulture Australia Ltd.

“We’re optimising the best vegetables – such as broccoli – and using the latest science to ensure those high levels are maintained all the way through to the cooking stage,“ says Erin O’Donoghue, a Vital Vegetables® science programme leader.

“Our strategy is to look at the compounds in a vegetable that give health benefits, and then work out ways to ensure those compounds are present in large quantities. This might be achieved by modifying production methods, or improving the germplasm through breeding. Through bioassays, we also make sure the amounts are high enough to be beneficial,”  Dr O’Donoghue says.

The first of a pipeline of Vital Vegetables® broccoli varieties, developed through a collaboration with Henderson Seeds Group Pty Ltd, will be test-marketed to supermarkets in 2007.