Science In Your Shopping Cart

We’re peeling back the story behind America’s favorite comfort food—the potato—and the science that keeps your fries crispy and your red-skinned mashed potatoes creamy and delicious. In this episode, you’ll learn how the primary disease that caused the Irish Potato Famine back in the 1800s is still a major problem for potato growers all over the world, including in the U.S. We’ll also introduce you to a new potato variety, called Becca Rose, a classic red-skinned, white-flesh potato with a secondary skin color that helps extend its shelf life.

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We all know we should eat more beans; and yet Americans eat fewer of these superfoods than most other countries. Beans are packed with vitamins and minerals, including iron. They are also gluten free. ARS researchers are studying ways to make beans more attractive to the American public, including learning how certain bean types provide more bioavailable iron, that is, the absorbability of the iron that you ingest from a food or meal. We also learn how certain beans are high in flavonoids, and we introduce you to a new bean variety, USDA Fortuna, a versatile bean with exceptional drought tolerance, a short cooking time, and good variability for iron and zinc. It also has resistance to several pests and diseases – making it very attractive for farmers.

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Geneva, New York is one of the great destinations in the U.S. for crisp, juicy, semi-dry and semi-sweet wines. Here in the Finger Lakes region, wineries pour popular varieties like Riesling, Cabernet Franc, and Chardonnay, as well as unique hybrid grapes, like Niagara, Cayuga White, and Vignoles. In this episode, you’ll learn how researchers developed loosely clustered Vignoles wine grapes that drastically reduced their susceptibility to bunch rot disease.  You’ll also learn how researchers are looking into the “Foxy” flavor found in the popular Concord grape.

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Let ARS do the shopping for you! Here are some new food varieties from ARS that will certainly wet your appetite. And best of all, no delivery charge!

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Salinas Valley in Northern California is better known as the salad bowl of the world. It’s where cool coastal air meets rows of green plots, and where ARS researchers are turning some of your favorite vegetables into nutritional powerhouses.

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There are rice producers all over the country, but the main producer of rice in the United States might surprise you. In this episode, we share what makes for ideal rice growing conditions. We also discover a new type of rice that might make you wonder if you have wandered into a movie theater.

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We visit the ARS Grain Legume Genetics and Physiology Research Unit, where researchers live and breathe pulse crops—peas, lentils, and chickpeas.

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ARS Researchers are breeding peanuts that are resistant to diseases that greatly impact peanut quality and yield.

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Citrus greening, also known as Huanglongbing or HLB, is a vector borne disease that has devastated the citrus industry here in Florida. There is no cure, but ARS researchers and their colleagues are developing an arsenal of solutions that will sweeten the citrus industry here in the sunshine state.

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Imagine a library… but instead of books, it holds seeds, cuttings, and living plants from every corner of the world. Today, we’re stepping into a living library to tell the history and future of new food varieties – how they have been selected, improved, and delivered from the farm to your shopping cart.

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