Plant breeders partner with chefs for tastier produce through a University of Wisconsin–Madison horticulture initiative called “Seed to Kitchen"
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
November 15, 2016
Have you noticed that more and more restaurants are featuring great-tasting, locally sourced foods on their menus?
Now, through a UW–Madison horticulture initiative called “Seed to Kitchen,” chefs on the culinary cutting edge are working with plant breeders to grow produce with specific flavor characteristics their customers will love.
The Seed to Kitchen Initiative from the Department of Horticulture at UW-Madison is a collaboration among chefs, farmers and breeders, to present a unique opportunity to focus on vegetable variety characteristics important to local food systems. These include flavor, fresh-market quality and agronomic performance on smaller-scale diversified farms.
There are many active vegetable breeding programs at UW-Madison, as well as a strong local foods movement supported by excellent farmers and chefs. Wisconsin is also the #2 state in the country for the total number of organic farms and for the number of organic vegetable farms. There is increasing involvement of farmers, non-profit associations and seed companies selecting for traits important to organic and direct market farmers.
Flavor and direct-market quality traits are difficult to measure in plant breeding programs. In addition, flavor has often not been a priority because of the importance of traits such as shelf life and tolerance to shipping in long-distance food systems. By working directly with chefs and farmers to develop evaluation methods for flavor, the Seed to Kitchen Initiative hopes to improve our ability to select high-quality vegetable varieties for farmers, gardeners and consumers.
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