Raw Materials for the Markets
Both conventional breeding and more particularly the promise of direct genetic modification of genotype offer the potential for changing the marketing dynamic of fresh produce, milk and meat.
Fruit and vegetables marketed to the consumer are still predominantly producer led; what is offered is what can be grown. Quality criteria reflect, not what is desired but the limits within which a product is acceptable or tolerated.
By using advanced breeding techniques the food industry would want the potential to match a fruit or vegetable to the consumers’ preference and the consumers’ mode of using the product. This would be true of fresh produce for manufacture, too.
The dream is to be able to specify the ideal quality criteria of a fruit or vegetable and know that a grower is able to match the characteristics accurately and consistently. The desirable characteristics would include flavor, sweetness, texture, nutrient content and durability in storage. No doubt the growers would want to specify such characteristics as yield drought tolerance, insect resistance and ease of harvest.
Similar scenarios can be imagined for milk and meat. As the market demand for butter fat, casein and whey protein moves, one or other component is in surplus, another is dearth. Although some changes in gross composition have been achieved through conventional breeding and feed regimes, could milk composition be more closely tailored to market demand by a better understanding of feed conversion or by altering the genotype?
In the livestock market, the demands for the different cuts of meat must be managed. Chickens yield a fairly steady ration of leg to wing to breast meat. However, the market does not necessarily reflect this balance. Beef muscle is selected from different parts of the animal according to the desire for leanness, tenderness and flavor, but the market for hind and fore quarter does not necessarily reflect the fat that for every forequarter there is exactly one hindquarter. Raw Materials for the Markets
