Scientists Compare Nutritional and Phytochemical Properties of GE Pepper and Its Parent Cultivar
One of the considerations in the development of biotech crops is the preservation of nutritional property of the crop. The biotech crop must contain at least equal nutritional value as that of the parent line. Thus, Young-Sang Lee of Soonchunhyang University in Korea and team conducted a study to compare the nutritional and phytochemical composition of genetically engineered (GE) red pepper resistant to cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) to its parent cultivar.
The research team analyzed the nutrient content (moisture, protein, lipid, ash, carbohydrate, and energy), minerals, fatty acid composition, casaicinoids, sugars (glucose, sucrose, and fructose), vitamin E, vitamin C, phytosterols, squalene contents, and ASTA color values of GE pepper and its parent line. Results of the analyses showed that there were no significant differences in the levels of the compounds in GE pepper and the parent line except for stigmasterol, a type of phytosterol. However, the difference was below the 15% natural-fluctuation threshold. Therefore, the results imply that CMV-GE pepper is equivalent to its parent line in terms of nutritional and phytochemical composition.
Read the abstract at http://www.springerlink.com/content/q32556j32q4v3212/.
This article is part of the Crop Biotech Update, a weekly summary of world developments in agri-biotech for developing countries, produced by the Global Knowledge Center on Crop Biotechnology, International Service for the Aquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications SEAsiaCenter (ISAAA)
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