Selenium rich tomato

Plants can manufacture vitamins, amino acids and many other nutrients; but they cannot manufacture electrolytes and minerals. The electrolytes and minerals are necessary for the growth and development of all the plants including tomato plants too. The tomato plants absorb the minerals and electrolytes from soils.

Tomato fruits contain minerals. One of the minerals found in the tomato fruits is selenium which is necessary for our good health. Availability of enough selenium content also depends on the availability of selenium in the soils. Selenium is trace mineral which behaves like antioxidant in our body system. In other words, selenium is remaining in positive ion form in our body system and destroys the harmful effects of the harmful free radicals.

Besides, selenium improves defense mechanism in our body. It improves the fertility among men. It helps protect inflammation of thyroid gland. It reduces the problems of menopause in women. The deficiency of the mineral: selenium increases the risk of certain cancers in our body. The presence of the selenium also helps prevent the incidence of breast cancer. In a study conducted in women for breast cancer, the result reported that supplementation of the trace mineral: selenium reduced the breast cancer in the women by 50%.

The rich sources of selenium are tomato, garlic, onions and milk. Recent study has opened new evidence about the function of selenium in human body system. Supplementation of the selenium has improved the mood of the people. People who were taking no selenium or taking in negligible amount, their mood was fine, instead they were anxious, depressed and tired. They started to feel better they were fed the diet with enough selenium. The evidence was discovered by psychologist David Benton and Richard Cook at University College in Swansea.

This is because the selenium has the property of antioxidant which destroys the harmful effects of harmful free radical from our body system. Please don’t believe that increasing the selenium amount further in the diet improves the mood more.

Daily intake of selenium more than the trace dose may produce some effects such as dizziness, nausea, hair loss, skin rash and problems in nervous system. In the soils where selenium is rich and soil is moderately acidic, and if the tomato fruit does not contain selenium, breeders should start the research on the genotypic variation of tomato cultivars for efficiency of selenium absorption from the soils. Accordingly they should start engineering tomato with high selenium absorption from the soils.

Tomato plants can absorb about 56 elemental minerals from soils if the soils contain the minerals. But continuous cropping of the agricultural crops depletes all the electrolytes and minerals from the soils. It is about four years of continuous cultivation of our crops that depletes all soil nutrients including nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Nowadays our agricultural soils have ten or less elemental minerals.

Similarly our departmental stores and grocery stores are selling tomato fruits containing about only ten elemental minerals. So the deficiency must be corrected in the soils with addition of the elemental minerals. Otherwise our crop products will have no more than ten elemental minerals and electrolytes.

Tomato breeders are working in the tomato research to increase the lycopene content in the tomato fruits. Modern tomato breeders are also working to add anthocyanin producing genes from snapdragon into the tomato plant so as the tomato plants and fruits start synthesizing and monopolizing anthocyanin pigment to make the tomato fruits purple. Why do not the tomato scientists work in the genetic engineering of the tomato plants for high efficiency of selenium absorption from the soils?

Tomato crop should be fertilized with trace minerals such as selenium and chromium. Crop scientists are working to make rice grain with the pigment of yellow for vitamin A. I again want to emphasize to carry out researches on selenium absorption efficiency in tomato plants. The scientists they can work in the direction of high selenium absorption too through foliar application too.

Scientists should work to make the tomato fruits complete vegetable with a wide variety of minerals and vitamins in enough amounts as the fruit ranks at the top in the list of vegetables with respect to its production and consumption. The popularity of tomato fruit among the people is very high in the world. So, scientists have to work to make it more useful for all the people in the world.

Because of the continuous growing of crops each year, soils nutrients are depleted. So trace minerals such as selenium should be added to the soils or treated through foliar application with adsorption and absorption medium with the selenium solution.

Taking minerals from a wide variety of vegetables and fruits is better than the multi-mineral tablets. The minerals in the fruits and vegetables are in available form than the minerals in the tablet forms. So prefer to take fruits and vegetables for a variety of nutrients. I also recommend farmers to grow vegetables including tomato in the soils adding several necessary and beneficial minerals for plant growth and development as well as for human being.  

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