Growing greener greens(ease fracture-risks and osteoporosis. In...)

In the UK, vegetables excluding potatoes provide less than one tenth of our calcium and magnesium intakes. It's thought a relatively modest increase in the concentration of these minerals in green leafy vegetables would have a significant beneficial effect on our health. Dr Broadley says this is likely to be achievable by improving fertilizers and breeding programmes:

"Although it seems an obvious solution, we do not yet know how much calcium or magnesium fertiliser to apply to soil to optimise dietary intakes. This is because fertiliser studies tend to focus on crop yield. The 'blue-skies' breeding approaches rely on the fact that each different variety of Brassica represents a unique collection of variants of genes (alleles). However, just like different dog breeds, Brassica varieties are in theory interfertile. By crossing different varieties, and finding combinations of alleles which alter the calcium and magnesium content of plant leaves, we can inform conventional breeding programmes. The most exciting part of this project is that it builds directly on recent investment in Brassica research in the UK and elsewhere, which means we will soon have a fully-sequenced genome to work with, alongside other important resources."

Professor Douglas Kell, BBSRC Chief Executive said: "Taking social and economic issues aside, the challenge we face is to produce enough nutrition for a growing global population using limited resources and without significant negative impact to the environment. There are a number of ways to approach this through bioscience research, one of which is to actually aim to increase the nutritional value of the food we are producing. Dr Broadley's project is a good example of where UK bioscience research is taking on
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