Sensory and Consumer Studies in Plant Breeding: A Guidance for Edamame Development in the U.S.

Abstract

Plant breeding is an important discipline to develop food products and improve overall quality, chemical composition, and nutritional value of crops, vegetables, fruits, and nuts, which can be important allies in health promotion. Apples, blueberries, wine grapes, tomatoes, and peanuts are a few examples of food products that were improved in past decades through plant breeding programs in the United States. Recently, edamame (vegetable soybean) has gained special attention from breeders, non-breeder researchers, growers, and consumers, and new edamame varieties are currently being developed for domestic production. As a popular nutritious crop in Asian countries, edamame is increasing in sales and consumption in the United States. Therefore, edamame has great potential to be a profitable alternative crop to replace tobacco farming, whose production and market value have been declining. Until the present date, most published reviews on edamame have focused on its agronomic characteristics. However, understanding consumer expectations, needs, and acceptability for new and improved crops like edamame is vital to guide and sustain their production. It is important that researchers working on plant breeding programs understand and consider the aspects that are relevant for both growers and consumers (e.g., crop productivity, pest and disease resistance, nutritional properties, and sensory attributes). Thus, this review paper aims to integrate available information on sensory quality of edamame and to support its development and production in the United States. This review presents an overview of how sensory evaluation and consumer studies have been used to support plant breeding programs in the development of alternative crops, such as edamame.

A Modified Roger’s Distance Algorithm for Mixed Quantitative–Qualitative Phenotypes to Establish a Core Collection for Taiwanese Vegetable Soybeans

“…To the best of our knowledge, our vegetable soybean germplasms consisted of 213 accessions, which are the largest collection worldwide. Vegetable soybean becomes popular just for more than one decade and mostly in East Asia, e.g., Japan, Taiwan, China, and South Korea; therefore, other countries take merely a small amount of production; the majority of vegetable soybeans are imported from Asia ( Wang, 2018 ; Carneiro et al, 2020 ). This is why it did not attract the attention of breeders until this century.…”

Securing Data in Life Sciences—A Plant Food (Edamame) Systems Case Study

“…The domestic (U.S.) edamame market chain is in its infancy. Most (70%) edamame is imported from China and other Asian countries, though there is an increased production of edamame as producers are seeking alternative crops (Carneiro et al, 2020;Carneiro et al, accepted). In this case study, access to data from seed expansion, commercial seed sales, production, processing, and final product sales was not available as there is limited domestic edamame production and processing.…”

“…One participant emphasized the fact that the group collected economic data in particular years. In this interdisciplinary project, consumer acceptability and economic impact were both considered, which is not typical (Carneiro et al, 2020). Participants also raised concerns about intellectual property protection and shared the fear of having their data stolen, for example, by companies that would be interested in commercializing edamame seeds.…”

“…The timeframe from original genetic materials through a licensed final variety may be 10 or more years. Often, there is a gap in data at the latter segments of the value chain, such as the producer, processor, retailer, or consumer, where creating value is important in driving the market (Carneiro et al, 2020). Where do the producer, processor, retail, and consumer needs and values enter the breeder's perspective and how do those needs influence the behaviors of the parties related to the data-driven decisions at the early stages of specialty crop breeding and the related value chain (Fishbein and Ajzen, 2009)?…”

“…These rely on the U.S. consumer finding the domestic product that meets their needs and desires for product flavor, nutrition, economics (price) as well as sustainability values. In fact, consumer perspective is not typically addressed in the early stages of the specialty crop breeding process (Carneiro et al, 2020), thus increasing the risk of selecting varieties that meet desired agronomic characteristics but do not address consumer demands.…”