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Could Improved Wheats Reduce Magnesium
Deficiencies?
By Don Comis December
20, 2006
Newly developed low-phytate breeding lines of wheat have been found to
produce flour with 25 percent more magnesium than commercial varieties,
according to Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists. Varying amounts of
magnesium, phosphorus, zinc and other minerals occur naturally in wheat
kernels.
Not only do the flours made from these new wheat lines have more
magnesium in them, but lower levels of phytic acid may increase the magnesium's
bioavailablity, or capacity for uptake and use by people and animals. Magnesium
deficiency has been linked to development of osteoporosis and Type 2 diabetes,
both of which are on the rise in the United States.
ARS plant geneticist
Edward
J. Souza and colleagues at the University of Idaho Research and
Extension Center in Aberdeen—Mary J. Guitteri and Karen M.
Peterson—selected the low-phytate lines from greenhouse tests. Souza,
formerly at the University of
Idaho, is now research leader of the ARS
Soft
Wheat Quality Research Unit at Wooster, OH. Guitteri is now at the
Ohio Agricultural Research and
Development Center at Wooster.
The researchers evaluated the low-phytate plants in field trials for
two years. Since the new wheat lines have a different distribution of essential
minerals, with more in the inner germ than in the outer bran, the flour made
from them tends to be more nutritional, whether it is refined or whole-wheat.
Although magnesium deficiency is rare in North America, a high phytate
content in grains and the loss of the magnesium in grains' outer coat (bran)
that's removed during processing reduce the amount available in the diet.
Magnesium isn't usually added to refined flours, so breeding wheat varieties
that could add magnesium to American diets would be a natural way to reinforce
flours.
Four papers by the scientists addressing various aspects of
low-phytate grains appear in the November-December 2006 issue of Crop Science, online at:
http://crop.scijournals.org/cgi/content/full/46/6/2403
ARS is the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.
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