colorful carrots with character

(USDA) - Shredded in salads and slaws, steamed, or just peeled and dunked in an herb-speckled dip, carrots are versatile veggies that add colorful zest to our dinner plates. These crunchy orange roots are also a well-known source of vitamin A. Just a single, full-size carrot more than fulfills an adult’s daily quotient of the essential vitamin.

But the carrot hasn’t always been the vitamin A powerhouse that it is today. Over two decades ago, scientists in the ARS Vegetable Crops Research Unit in Madison, Wisconsin, began a quest to breed carrots packed with beta-carotene—an orange pigment used by the body to create vitamin A. Thanks largely to this ARS work, today’s carrots provide consumers with 75 percent more beta-carotene than those available 25 years ago.

The researchers, led by plant geneticist Philipp Simon, haven’t limited themselves to the color orange. They’ve selectively bred a rainbow of carrots—purple, red, yellow, even white. Scientists are learning that these plant pigments perform a range of protective duties in the human body—which is not surprising, says Simon, since many of the pigments serve to shield plant cells during photosynthesis.

Red carrots derive their color mainly from lycopene, a type of carotene believed to guard against heart disease and some cancers. Yellow carrots accumulate xanthophylls, pigments similar to beta-carotene that support good eye health. Purple carrots possess an entirely different class of pigments—anthocyanins—which act as powerful antioxidants.

While colored carrots are unusual, they’re not exactly new. “Purple and yellow carrots were eaten more than 1,000 years ago in Afghanistan and 700 years ago in western Europe,” says Simon. “But the carrot-breeding process has gone on intensively for just 50 years.”

Simon and his team of ARS researchers and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) have recently shown that their highly pigmented carrots are a ready source of some sought-after nutrients.

Why Be Conventional?

What would you say to a glass of purple carrot juice? Some aren’t so sure.

Aside from enhancing the nutritional value of carrots— as well as onions, garlic, and cucumbers—researchers at Simon’s laboratory also work to improve the veggies’ culinary quality and appeal.

“It’s hard to know what to aim for when selecting for a purple carrot,” Simon says, “since we’ve no defined type to go by.” So he’s subjecting the new varieties to consumer taste tests, hoping to find carrots with a sweet and mild flavor.

“People who are asked to taste the colorful carrots are concerned about their flavor,” says Simon. “We’ve become married to the colors we associate with particular foods. We eat with our eyes, to some extent.”

Simon is tapping taste preferences through an unexpected group of eaters: children in Wisconsin’s inner cities and American Indian reservations. Children from lower income groups are at greater risk for developing a nutritional deficiency, like low vitamin A status. “Some of these kids have never even had a carrot before,” says Simon. But their comments so far have been positive.

With their compelling health benefits and a thumbs-up from taste testers, Simon’s colorful carrots will be a great addition to supermarket produce aisles once consumers create a demand for them.