Eggplant now RP’s top vegetable crop — UPLB

Time was when eggplant was just an ordinary vegetable crop.

The common notion then, too, was that it had low nutritional value.

Now, it is the country’s number one vegetable in terms of volume of production (about 179,000 tons per year valued at almost P2 billion) and hectares (some 20,000 hectares, almost one-third of them in the Ilocos Region).

The once "lowly" talong also has been found to have a high antioxidant property in a study done by the UP Los Baños Institute of Plant Breeding (UPLB-IPB) with funding support from the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Agricultural Research (DA-BAR).

These were among the eggplant’s qualities shared by Dr. Desiree Hautea, UPLB-IPB director, with 35 print (national and community newspapers), broadcast, and cyber press journalists from Luzon who attended a workshop on biotechnology held in Los Baños, Laguna, last Sept. 28-29.

Billed "Media Workshop: Understanding and Having Fun with Biotechnology," the activity was part of the continuing education program on modern biotechnology by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture-Biotechnology Information Center (SEARCA–BIC), Agricultural Biotechnology Support Program III (ABSP II), and Philippine Science Journalists Association, Inc. (PSciJourn).

Records show that as of 1999, eggplant had displaced tomato as the country’s number one vegetable crop, according to UPLB-IPB scientists.

Encouragingly, too, talong has been found to be among the best health crops.

Dr. Hautea said eggplant has an antioxidant property, as confirmed by a study done by UPLB researchers led by Dr. Virgilio Garcia.

Antioxidants, known as the "modern-day anti-aging nutrients," are phytochemicals or substances (mostly present in vegetables and fruits) that neutralize or counterbalance the free radicals generated by the body during normal metabolism (chemical changes in living cells).

A report of the Los Baños-based Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD) also stated:

"Free radicals are the most vicious and the most toxic by-products of metabolism. When not neutralized, they can travel through the body cells, disrupting the structures of proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates, and cause cell damage. Such damage is believed to contribute to aging and degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cataract, and the like."

In the UPLB study, eggplant exhibited the highest antioxidant activity (98.68 percent). It has followed by sayote (93 percent), ampalaya (91 percent) alugbati (90 percent), sitao (89.78 percent), and malunggay (89.61 percent).

Now, you can stuff yourself with eggplant and be healthy. — Rudy A. Fernandez