Stressing plants produce stronger functional nutrients?

Stressing plants to induce their natural defences could lead to a new range of functional foods enriched with a plant's natural defensive compounds, phytoalexins. Researchers from the US Department of Agriculture report that stress can lead plants to produce higher levels of these beneficial compounds, which may possess antioxidant and anti-inflammation activity, and maybe even anticancer activity. Writing in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the USDA researchers state that phytoalexins have been largely ignored as nutritional components in human foods. “We propose a new area within functional food research called phytoalexin-enriched foods that utilize induced plant compounds or phytoalexins created either pre- or post-harvest that have been traditionally viewed only as plant defensive compounds, but have beneficial health effects,” wrote lead author Stephen Boue.

Production of the phytoalexins would be achieved by biotic and abiotic elicitors – substances that elicit the production of the phytoalexins – as well as other stress-inducing techniques. This would be done both before harvest and after harvest, they said. The various methods for production of such plants include organic cultivation, which reportedly leaves plants more susceptible to pathogen and insect attack. This may subsequently lead to increases in secondary metabolites as the plants defend themselves. “It is tempting to speculate that in modern agriculture we are limiting at least to some extent the production of health-promoting compounds in our diets that may be present at higher levels in organically grown foods or have been at higher levels in foods grown before the advent of modern agricultural pest control,” wrote the researchers.

Bonnie - it is shocking that this is coming from the USDA. There are some loaded comments here. I would be fine with using the extracts for medicinal purposes. Unfortunately, as we commented on last year, stressed plants also produce more salicylic acid, which many people have problems with.