I’ve recently developed somewhat of an addiction to cranberry juice. I’m
not really sure how it happened, but one day I picked up the stuff and haven’t
seemed to been able to put it down since. (So much for “somewhat” of an
addiction…) While looking around Science Daily (we all seem to love this site
don’t we?), I came across an article about insect resistance found in cranberry
leaves. With the issues society is having with pesticides these days, I
thought, Hmm…
Since everyone tends to
gravitate towards the “organic” produce and juices and blah blah blah now, I
thought this was an interesting study. If was found that certain cultivars of
cranberries were preferred over others by insects and this is likely due to six
compounds which are found naturally in cranberry leaves which ward off the
insects. Cranberries are a perennial crop, meaning they are harvested grow for
more than two years and can produce many seasons of fruits. This means that an
above average insect feeding activity can greatly affect the next season’s crop
of fruit. Which is super bad for my juice addiction, right?
These compounds that are found vary
between cranberry cultivars, explaining why insect pests prefer one over
another. If this information was found, I’m wondering if the cranberry crops
cultivated for harvest may start to gravitate towards these cultivars in order
to deter insect pests from destroying crops. I wonder if this type of
information may be applicable to future studies to find natural pesticides to
possibly breed into our crop cultivars to better suit the “organic” needs of
consumers. Even though we all know “organic” isn’t all that organic..
Nice post! I'm one of those people that definitely tries to eat organic produce whenever possible so this post really was very interesting to me. If you're addicted to cranberry juice you should try tart cherry juice. Researchers have found that tart cherry consumption is linked to increased melatonin production, so it helps people that have trouble sleeping.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to look into that. I like the tart pomegranate juice, too, but it's really just too expensive for my habit (haha). I don't really have trouble sleeping, but it'll be good to know around study cramming times (like last week for Cell!).
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