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W. P. RIDLEY, Composition Program, Monsanto Co., 800 N. Lindbergh Blvd., Saint Louis, MO 63167 The development of nutritionally enhanced crops for human food and animal feed requires an understanding of the natural variability in the levels of nutrients in conventional crops. Most existing publicly available crop composition data sources have relied on data that were 20 or more years old. In many cases the methods used for the generation of these data were not known or their performance parameters were not available. In May 2003, the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) released an online comprehensive crop composition database (www.cropcomposition.org) that provides up-to-date information on the natural variability in the composition of conventional crops. The database is a compilation of over 53,000 data points on 102 nutritionally important analytes for maize and soybean samples obtained from controlled field trials, in multiple worldwide locations between 1995 and 2001. All data can be traced back to their source and every data point is identified with its analytical method. The database is searchable, via a web-browser-based interface, on a number of attributes including analyte, matrix, year of harvest, and field location. Information about the database has been shared with regulators, scientific/academic institutions, FAO, OECD, other ILSI task forces, and the US National Academy of Sciences. This database will complement the presently available food composition databases and serve as an easily accessible resource for researchers in plant, food and animal sciences who are interested in understanding the natural variability that results from the interaction of crop genotype with environment. The ILSI Task Force responsible for the database intends to obtain and add data from other sources such as universities and research institutes, as well as to add data on the composition of a wider range of crops.
Session 26, The safety and nutrional assessment of nutrionally improved crops
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