b"Breeding for FlavorBreeders start with seeds to build better-tasting vegetables.Melissa ShipmanTHE SEED INDUSTRYis stepping up to help consum-ers hit their daily vegetable intake goals and enjoy the taste while theyre at it.If we want people to eat something, it has to taste good, says Lane Selman, professor of practice at Oregon State University and founder of the Culinary Breeding Network. That is how we get people to eat better.The current Centers for Disease Control Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend adults daily consume 1.52 cup-equiv-alents of fruits and 23 cup-equivalents of vegetables, but the most recent Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance system (BRFSS) data shows only a fraction of adults hit this target. According to the 2021 National Survey of Childrens Health, nearly 50% of children and 20% of adults do not eat a daily vegetable. About one in three children did not eat a daily fruit. Breeders are tasked with competing with the convenience and flavors of processed foods. If they want those numbers to change that means making better tasting produce, and some-times even correcting past mistakes. Aaron Hummel, Pairwise vice president of trait and tool delivery.All of those investments to make tomatoes better have resulted in a tomato no one really likes, says Michael Mazourek, a vegetable breeder and associate professor at Cornell University who is best known for his work on Habanada, a mild habanero pepper, and Honeynut a miniature butternut squash.We took all of our food to a commodity system where we can walk into any franchise grocery store and see the same bin of bell peppers year-round, he says. Its the same every day and thats actually an incredible thing, but there is no incentive to make a better, more delicious pepper because its just going to get dumped in the bin and no one will know or care. That consistency is important to todays global food market, but Mazourek says in the past, he has been actively discouraged from breeding for flavor because it would just mess up people's experience. Those pink, crunchy tomatoes are easy to pick on because they are consistent, but theyre consistently dreadful, he says. Commodity FocusAaron Hummel, vice president of trait and tool delivery for Pairwise agrees commodity-focused decisions have largely ledLane Selman, Oregon State professor and founder of the Culinary breeding decisions.Breeding Network at the Winter Vegetable Sagra.26/ SEEDWORLD.COMFEBRUARY 2024"