ULTRA-HEALTHY fruit and veg with extra vitamin C could become commonplace, thanks to the humble strawberry.
Most plants produce vitamin C from the sugar L-galactose. But Fernando Agius and her colleagues at the University of Cordoba in Spain have found that strawberries have a second way – they can also turn D-galacturonic acid, which is released as the fruit ripens, into the vitamin.
The team identified a strawberry gene, GalUR, that encodes a key enzyme in this process. When they engineered it into thale cress, the concentration of vitamin C in the plants more than doubled (Nature Biotechnology, DOI: 10.1038/nbt777).…
