London (20.4.07) – Pressure groups campaigning against new technologies in agriculture spend much of their effort promoting organic crops on the basis of minor differences in one or another component. That crop is then proclaimed as a “higher nutritional value” but whether it actually has any significance for the consumer is neatly side-stepped. That argument is extended by association to include all organic products and, by itself, is often used as sufficient to condemn conventional – and certainly GM – crops.

What then would those lobbyists make of an new announcement that GM potato tubers actually have a higher vitamin E content than others?

Vitamin E (tocopherol) is, of course, a powerful antioxidant essential for human health and synthesized only by photosynthetic organisms. A strain of GM potatoes accumulated nearly three times as much vitamin E as a conventional strain even though that was nevertheless 10 to 100 times less than the accumulation in leaves. Still, one eats potato tubers but not leaves.

Is the finding of significance for the human diet? Who knows? But you can be sure if such a finding had been made in organic crops it would have been trumpeted from the rooftops as showing the benefits of organic agriculture.

One does have to be so very careful to evaluate the actual evidence and to put it into context.

Sources:

1. Is organic food better for you? Get the facts. Soil Association (http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/Living/nutrition_facts.html)

2. Elizabeth F. Crowell, J. Mitchell McGrath and David S. Douches (6.4.07). Accumulation of vitamin E in potato ( Solanum tuberosum) tubers. Transgenic Research (http://www.springerlink.com/content/g0515325830j8m74/)

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