Advances in genetic engineering and the success of 'functional foods', such as calcium-fortified juice, are spawning a new, exotic generation of agricultural products: bananas that produce a cholera vaccine, vegetables containing bonus vitamins, and many more.
Experts in agriculture, nutrition and public health, meeting for a three-day "foods for health" conference last week at the University of Minnesota in the US, were cited as confirming that the new products will blur the distinction between the kitchen cupboard and the medicine cabinet.
Researchers are working to get a measle vaccine from a tobacco plant, rabies vaccines from spinach and a cholera vaccine from bananas. They have engineered corn to produce oral vaccines for travellers' diarrhoea, antibodies for the treatment of herpes and an enzyme for treating the symptoms of cystic fibrosis, delegates at the meeting were told.
The new wave of gene-engineered "agriceutical" drugs and enhanced-nutrition foods is still confined to laboratories and hot houses, but human trials on the first products are either under way or about to begin. The US National Corn Growers' Association estimated that at least 400 plant-based drugs were under development worldwide.
Geneticists maintain that once the new crops move into the field, special precautions will be needed to keep them from cross-pollinating with conventional food crops and contaminating them with errant genes.