Microgreens, which are young, edible plants that only take one to three weeks to harvest, are more than garnish at trendy restaurants - they could be the answer to global hunger, according to plant scientists at Penn State. Already densely packed with nutrients, microgreens can be made even more nutritious with a couple of minor growing adjustments. The research team that has experimented with different approaches for five years recently published the results of two new studies quantifying the nutritional results of supplementing microgreens with varied amounts of zinc during their growth, called agronomic biofortification, and exposing the plants to different amounts of light.
"Microgreens are ideal for zinc biofortification because they grow quickly, they're very nutrient-dense and they contain low levels of antinutrients - compounds that can block zinc absorption," said team leader Francesco Di Gioia, associate professor of vegetable crop science in the College of Agricultural Sciences, senior author on both new studies. "We provided zinc in fertigation - applying nutrients via irrigation - and analyzed the metabolomic profiles - comprehensive analyses of the molecules involved in the metabolism process in plant tissues - of pea and radish microgreens in response to light intensity and zinc fertilization inputs."
First, in findings recently posted in Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the team reported how zinc enrichment and light intensity affect the nutritional composition of radish microgreens. They found that high light intensity increased antioxidants, such as vitamin C, flavonoids and phenolic acids in the tiny plants - compounds that play important roles in plant defense, growth and color, and also possess health benefits for humans.
