Today’s Brussels sprouts are tastier than you remember when you were a kid. It’s not that your sophisticated adult palate appreciates them more. Rather, new varieties have replaced the original vegetables. We can appreciate the change in plant breeders. And modern breeders, armed with new gene-editing techniques, are trying to replicate the reinvention of Brussels sprouts.
In the late 1990s, scientists identified certain chemicals called glucosinolates that cause the bitterness of Brussels sprouts. To identify tastier versions with lower levels of these compounds, plant breeders began growing old seeds that had previously been discarded to produce meager yields. They have crossed their tasty but low-yielding plants with modern, more prolific individuals to find offspring that produce plenty of tasty buds, transforming the once-bad vegetable from a bitter pill into a popular side dish.
But other vegetables did just as well. This is because most breeding decisions prioritize plant traits that are important to vegetable growers, not vegetable eaters. “I think disease resistance is probably the main focus of most breeding programs these days, because it jeopardizes the ability of farmers to grow their crops,” said Harry Klee, professor emeritus of science. said. with tomatoes. “Quality attributes are really completely ignored.”
Additionally, breeders focused on consumer crops must navigate the controversy over genetically modified organisms (GMOs). All domesticated species now have different genetics than their ancestors, but in agriculture the term GMO refers to plants with genes imported from an entirely different species, and these changes are more severe. Subject to regulation. But new technology allows breeders to work within the context of the plant’s own genome, allowing fine-tuning that doesn’t trigger complex rules.
It’s hard to set flavor goals because different people have different tastes. Moreover, even under the best of conditions, flavor quality is more complex than yield and so on. “We’ve spent a lot of time and money figuring out what flavors are, but most breeding programs don’t have the ability to measure them,” says Klee.
But there’s a growing interest in prioritizing flavor. This is partly thanks to new genetic technologies such as the gene-snipping technology CRISPR and freely available and inexpensive DNA sequencing. “With more tools and techniques, there’s never been a better time to be a fruit or vegetable breeder,” says Susan Brown, an apple breeder at Cornell University.
Some companies are beginning to meet the challenge of developing tastier vegetables with these tools. Pairwise is battling glucosinolates, the same compounds that plagued Brussels sprouts.
For example, kale is particularly healthy, but many people prefer romaine or iceberg lettuce, which is less bitter. So Pairwise scientists figured out how to use CRISPR to edit a kale-like mustard green to suit that palate. I wanted to turn off the gene that codes for an enzyme called myrosinase. Myrosinase breaks down glucosinolates, creating a bitter taste when diners chew the leaves in their mouths. The result is healthier, less bitter greens that the company is selling this year under its brand of Conscious Foods.
This is a shining example of flavor-focused gene editing, said Tom Adams, co-founder and CEO of Pairwise. “From a gene-editing perspective, I think what makes sense is whether you can get rid of things that people don’t like,” he says. “It’s much more difficult to think about how you can incorporate really complex and wonderful flavors.” Traditional breeding is still the best way to create more complex flavors, says Adams. .
Traditional breeding is also the basis for another high-tech flavoring effort that seeks to reverse the thinking that first created tasteless vegetables. Instead of growing varieties, we are trying to close the vast distance from field to table. Plenty grows its plants in indoor vertical farming facilities that are closer to consumers, so the freshness of the produce is preserved, said Nate Storey, the company’s co-founder and chief scientific officer. .
When Plenty decided to start with green vegetables, the team grew thousands of traditionally bred varieties at the facility, he says. The researchers then adopted only the ones that yielded the tastiest crops rather than trying to develop new varieties. . “You just sort through all the wheels that exist and find the one that works best with your system.”
However, this method is not always successful. The company has been unable to find tomatoes that grow in its own facilities, so it is working on developing its own varieties using a speeded-up version of traditional breeding.
Tomatoes are a popular target. A third company uses epigenetics (changing the expression of genes rather than the genes themselves) to produce more flavorful tomatoes. Pairwise cuts out gene sequences that produce enzymes that interfere with flavor, while Sound Agriculture programs gene expression. This approach reduces the production of unwanted compounds by making gene sequences less accessible to transcription.
Sound Agriculture co-founder and chief technology officer Travis Bayer says it’s still a work in progress to understand how exactly to alter representations to get desired results. . “The science of plant epigenetics is really exciting and evolving pretty quickly,” he says. The company’s first epigenetically grown product, a tomato named Summerswell, is expected to hit store shelves this spring. Bayer said other ongoing projects focus on leafy greens and some fruits.
All of these vegetable growers hope to persuade people to consume the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables by having flavorful products on store shelves.
“Don’t waste time talking about educating people to eat better,” said tomato breeder Klee. “Give them a product that tastes better and they want to eat it.”
