Biotechnology to the traditional Mexican diet

• April 19, 2024

Biotechnology and other food innovations should be applied to rescue the traditional Mexican diet and improve scientific knowledge of the crops that make it up, he proposed Amanda Gálvez Mariscal , coordinator of the University Food Program (PUAL) of the UNAM.

In Mexico, he said, there are 60 races of native maize and up to 2,000 varieties of this grain, each better adapted to a specific ecosystem or related to a flavor or characteristic that farmers like, for example, thicken the pozole, make esquites or serve for totopos.

"There are genes that are responsible for each of the desirable properties and could be identified to guide plant breeders."

While in our country there are about 30 varieties of native tomatoes, and only two or three varieties are found in the market, in some Asian countries they have obtained varieties of golden rice, genetically modified, which expresses vitamin A in greater quantity and helps children in these regions have less vision problems.

This golden rice is highly technological and has around 50 patents involved in its design, for which, royalties must be paid, the specialist said.

For our region, he said, an example is the maize that bloom or open, help the pozole broth is thicker, and this is because they have genes that determine that their starch has a particular molecular structure.

"If scientific knowledge of this food is lacking, we can not know if those genes are actually present in the bagged corn they sell to make pozole in supermarkets."

On the other hand, through a deeper knowledge of the genes that exist in traditional foods, they can be helped to do business to small producers, certifying with tools and scientific knowledge that their crops have the desirable characteristics.

In the program University of Food of the UNAM We work on the characterization of these different races and varieties of corn because, although people like them and consume them, they do not know each other well from the technological point of view, the specialist said.

Gálvez Mariscal, who is a teacher in food science and technology, said that agriculture is currently pressured by production and by new biotechnologies

In countries like the United States and India, larger and larger extensions of soybeans and genetically modified maize are being grown, but these only have agronomic traits, such as insect resistance and herbicide tolerance, but no valuable nutritional characteristics for the consumer.

Faced with this situation, the researcher recommended that consumers buy food from the Mexican milpa and other fresh foods in the markets, and thus help rescue the underutilized and forgotten species of our country.

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