Today's Brussels sprouts （孢子甘蓝） taste better than you might remember from childhood, and that is because a new variety has replaced the original vegetable. You can thank plant breeders （植物育种家） for the change. Modern breeders, armed with new gene-editing technology, are looking to reproduce Brussels sprouts' reinvention.
In the late 1990s, scientists discovered specific chemicals which made Brussels sprouts taste bitter. Plant breeders started growing old seeds, previously abandoned due to poor yields （产量）, to look for tastier versions with lower levels of these specific chemicals. Then they crossed these delicious but low-yield plants with high-yield individuals until they found a version that made plenty of tasty sprouts, transforming the vegetable from a bitter pill into a popular dish.
But other vegetables haven't fared as well. That's because most breeding decisions favor plant traits that matter to vegetable growers, not vegetable eaters. For instance, disease resistance is probably the major focus these days of most breeding programs because that prevents the farmer from growing the crop. The taste of vegetables is ignored.
People, however, are now becoming interested in prioritizing the taste of vegetables thanks in part to new genetic technology such as the gene-snipping technique CRISPR and DNA sequencing which is cheap enough to use widely. "There's never been a better time to be a fruit breeder or a vegetable breeder because we have more tools and techniques," says Susan Brown, an apple breeder at Cornell University.
Some companies are beginning to use those tools to deal with the challenge of developing tastier vegetables. One company, Pairwise, is fighting the same compounds that troubled Brussels sprouts: glucosinolates. But this time researchers are improving the flavor of salad greens.
All vegetable growers hope that more flavorful products on store shelves will convince people to consume the recommended allowances （推荐量） of fruits and vegetables — and do so better than decades of nutritional guidance have. "Don't waste your time talking about trying to educate people to eat better," said Harry Klee, a professor who specializes in tomato breeding. "Just give them products that taste better and that they want to eat."
