Weed on our plates? You can also eat wild plants

Weed on the plate? Research wants to domesticate wild plants
Many consumers, it goes like this: You go through the supermarket and always buys the same. Nice, if you eat with friends and find out that there are other foods. Over many decades, eating habits have become established on a large scale, concentrating on just a few staple foods such as cereals, corn, rice, beans or potatoes. Too bad, because nature still offers a great variety of supposedly useless "weeds" that could be used in a big way. If they were to be tastier, more productive, better to harvest, storable and available through appropriate breeding.

That's exactly what the University of Copenhagen is doing now. Wild plants such as field chickweed, the grass green couch grass or the earth bulb, for example, are in the focus of science. While in the past, the desired breeding progress was achieved through years of selection and propagation, research is running out of time today. The world population is growing so fast that there is no time to move forward in the conventional way. Therefore, so-called genome editing methods would be available to specifically alter individual properties in the plants, the scientists say. Genes CRISPR / Cas could be used to target genes. When inserting or changing genes, it still hangs. But many research institutions around the world are working on solving these processes.

With fresh herbs, only the leaves are often used. But in many plants, the flowers are edible. These are even particularly tasty. (Image: Dionisvera / fotolia.com)

It is, however, in need of interpretation whether this applies in the strict sense as "genetic engineering", because then the European market for these products would be as good as closed. On the other hand, progress, for example in improving taste, is also a prerequisite for really making it into the shopping baskets of consumers. Chance used to help. Waiting for mutations that have just the desired effect, but then seems to be too cumbersome. The fact is: Of the more than 300,000 known plant species only about 200 are commercially used. Greater field and plate diversity could mitigate the harmful effects of climate change and provide enough food for a growing world population. Friederike Heidenhof, bzfe