Nutrient Density of Historically Important Dry Bean Cultivars.

The demand for healthy foods has caused companies to stress the functionality of their product and in some cases has led them to promote it by making loosely based claims.  Based on this trend the US Food and Drug Administration has made reliable nutrition labeling of food products a top priority which has led to the quest for a reliable method to assess the nutrient density of food products and the development and evaluation an equation, named the Nutrient Rich Food (NRF) index, which accurately measures nutrient density.  This equation takes into consideration nutrients to encourage and nutrients to limit and helps to rate and define the nutrient density of a food.  The value obtained by the NRF index informs consumers on which foods are healthy, which foods are not, and can help justify or deny health claims.  It also has potential use beyond its intended purpose by becoming a useful tool to plant breeders who are interested in improving the nutritional value of a given crop without focusing on a single nutrient.  Dry beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) are an excellent choice to test the NRF index as a breeding tool since they are phenotypically diverse in seed traits such as seed type, color, and size, and have shown significant genetic variability for Zn and Fe contents and protein. The objective of this research was to evaluate the NRF index as a breeding tool by comparison of phenotypically and genotypically diverse varieties of historic importance within black, navy and pinto market classes.  This approach has provided information on how seed nutrient levels have been impacted when breeding programs focused on agronomic traits.