New Broccoli breed to help fight heart disease

A new breed of broccoli has been developed in England by a team of scientists led by Richard Mithen at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich, England. This new breed called "Beneforte" contains a higher concentration of a nutrient called glucoraphanin which research suggests can help prevent heart disease by lowering the amount of cholesterol in the blood. Mithen and his team created this new hybrid by crossbreeding a common British variety of broccoli that was green with a flowering top and a Sicilian strain of nonflowering broccoli that is bitter but has a high content of glucoraphanin. The resulting hybrid has a taste and appearance similar to the the green common variety of broccoli but has the high glucoraphanin content of  its Sicilian parent. This new breed of broccoli is part of a new generation of produce that provide atypical nutrients that the conventional strain is either lacking or low in. The article mentions other examples of this, like a mushroom breed that has a higher content of vitamin D. Interestingly enough, the team that derived this new breed of broccoli did not did so through means of genetic modification but instead through 14 years of carefully selected crosses. It was nice to see that this method of genetic engineering was employed here, but the fact that it took them 14 years makes me wonder whether or not the assistance of genetic modification would have expedited the process. Overall, these new types or produce are a nice addition to our diets because they are some people who do not believe in taking supplements/vitamins so this new method of including /increasing different types of nutrients could help cater to their nutritional needs. Ultimately, this is just another reason to reach for your greens at dinner time.

http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/27/british-scientists-grow-super-broccoli/#more-45784 (article link)