Wheat the next multi-vitamin?
Wheat the next multi-vitamin?
WORRIED that wheat is destined to remain a low value commodity crop? Then news from North America may be welcome.
It seems that wheats high anti-oxidant content may be even more important than its fibre content in the battle against serious diseases, reports Stephen Leahy.
Antioxidants, including vitamins C, E, and A, deactivate so-called free radicals, which damage cells. "Free-radicals contribute to heart disease, cancer, diabetes, cataracts, even wrinkling," says Kansas State University biochemist Dolores Takemoto, who discovered wheats antioxidant capabilities.
Feeding wheat with high levels of orthophenols for six months to mice with a high incidence of colon tumours resulted in much smaller tumours and 60% fewer of them.
Kansas biochemists are now developing a genetically modified wheat variety with very high levels of orthophenols. "We will be modifying it to produce more of its own cancer-fighting chemicals," says Dr Takemoto. *