Transgenic Vegetable Breeding for Nutritional Quality and Health Benefits

Abstract

Vegetables are essential for well-balanced diets. About 3 billion people in the world are malnourished due to imbalanced diets. Vegetables can contribute to the prevention of malnutrition disorders. Genetic engineering enables vegetable breeders to incorporate desired transgenes into elite cultivars, thereby improving their value considerably. It further offers unique opportunities for improving nutritional quality and bringing other health benefits. Many vegetable crops have been genetically modified to improve traits such as higher nutritional status or better flavour, and to reduce bitterness or anti-nutritional factors. Transgenic vegetables can be also used for vaccine delivery. Consumers could benefit further from eating more nutritious transgenic vegetables, e.g. an increase of crop carotenoids by metabolic sink manipulation through genetic engineering appears feasible in some vegetables. Genetically engineering carrots containing increase Ca levels may boost Ca uptake, thereby reducing the incidence of Ca deficiencies such as osteoporosis. Fortified transgenic lettuce with zinc will overcome the deficiency of this micronutrient that severely impairs organ function. Folates deficiency, which is regarded as a global health problem, can also be overcome with transgenic tomatoes with folate levels that provide a complete adult daily requirement. Transgenic lettuce with improved tocopherol and resveratrol composition may prevent coronary disease and arteriosclerosis and can contribute to cancer chemopreventative activity. Food safety and health benefits can also be enhanced through transgenic approaches, e.g. rural African resource-poor consumers will benefit eating cyanide-free cultivars of cassava. Biotechnology-derived vegetable crops will succeed if clear advantages and safety are demonstrated to both growers and consumers.

Rice grain nutritional traits and their enhancement using relevant genes and QTLs through advanced approaches

“…Genetic engineering, an alternative approach to enhance nutritional values, has been considered to be the potential tool for the sustainable and efficient strategy for increasing the nutritional quality traits in target area of plants (Uzogara 2000; Lucca et al 2001; Zimmerman and Hurrel 2002; Dias and Ortiz 2012). The world population would likely to reach 8 billion by 2030.…”

Guiding strategies for breeding vegetable cultivars

“…The changes outlined above are merely some of the factors that are impacting on current production practices for horticultural crops. They also provide a plethora of opportunities for horticultural science to solve many of the current problems facing producers and to offer solutions to those issues that are concerning consumers [42][43][44].…”

“…Genetic engineering enables vegetable breeders to incorporate desired transgenes into elite cultivars, thereby improving their value considerably. It further offers unique opportunities for improving nutritional quality and bringing other health benefits [42,43]. Many vegetable crops have been genetically modified to improve traits such as higher nutritional status or better flavour, and to reduce bitter-ness or anti-nutritional factors [42,43].…”

Biodiversity and Plant Breeding as Tools for Harmony Between Modern Agriculture Production and the Environment

“…While conventional plant breeding utilizing non-transgenic approaches will remain the backbone of crop improvement strategies, transgenic crop cultivars should not be excluded as products capable of contributing to development goals. Available commercial transgenic crops and products are at least as safe in terms of food safety as those ensuing from conventional plant breeding [89,[92][93][94].…”