VATIS UPDATE Article

Researchers from the Ohio State University, the United States and the Italian National Agency for New Technologies have developed a “golden” potato with significantly increased levels of vitamins A and E. Findings from the new study were published recently in PLOS ONE. The research team found that a serving of the yellow-orange lab-engineered potato has the potential to provide as much as 42% of a child’;s recommended daily intake of vitamin A and 34% of a child’;s recommended intake of vitamin E. Moreover, the researchers concluded that women of reproductive age could get 15% of their recommended vitamin A and 17% of recommended vitamin E from that same 5.3-ounce (150- gram) serving.

Interestingly, the study investigators created a simulated digestive system including a virtual mouth, stomach, and small intestine to determine how much provitamin A and vitamin E could potentially be absorbed by someone who eats a golden potato. Provitamin A carotenoids are converted by enzymes into vitamin A that the body can use. Carotenoids are fat-soluble pigments that provide yellow, red and orange colors to fruits and vegetables. They are essential nutrients for animals and humans.

“We ground up boiled golden potato and mimicked the conditions of these digestive organs to determine how much of these fat-soluble nutrients became biologically available,” Dr. Failla noted. The main goal of the work was to examine provitamin A availability. The findings of the high content and availability of vitamin E in the golden potato were an unanticipated and pleasant surprise, Dr. Failla said.

The golden potato, which is not commercially available, was metabolically engineered in Italy by a team that collaborated with Dr. Failla on the study. The additional carotenoids in the tuber make it a more nutritionally dense food, with the potential of improving the health of those who rely heavily upon potatoes for nourishment. While plant scientists have had some success cross-breeding other plants for nutritional gain, the improved nutritional quality of the golden potato is only possible using metabolic engineering—the manipulation of plant genes in the lab.

“We have to keep an open mind, remembering that nutritional requirements differ in different countries and that our final goal is to provide safe, nutritious food to 8 billion people worldwide,” remarked study coauthor Giovanni Giuliano, Ph.D., research director at the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy, and Sustainable Development at the Casaccia Research Center in Rome. Dr. Failla agreed and added that “hidden hunger—deficiencies in micronutrients—has been a problem for decades in many developing countries because staple food crops were bred for high yield and pest resistance rather than nutritional quality. This golden potato would be a way to provide a much more nutritious food that people are eating many times a week, or even several times a day.”