In the ongoing effort to get Australians to eat more vegetables, our industry is in a great position to leverage one of the most fundamental qualities of any food: flavour.

Our world-beating fresh produce ranks highly with consumers when they’re thinking about health and nutrition, but that’s not the only factor that gets vegetables into shopping baskets. If they don’t enjoy the taste of their veggies, some Australians might think of eating them as a chore to be suffered through rather than an opportunity to enjoy some flavourful fresh produce.

Parts of this problem are managed through consumer education, such as by helping Australians understand how they can prepare or cook vegetables to enhance their great natural flavours, or by teaching them how and when to shop to buy veggies at their best.

On the production side, there’s also huge amounts of work being done to make sure that vegetables meet consumers’ flavour preferences – from qualitative research to understand their needs to breeding new varieties that tick those boxes.

If you’re interested in understanding the facts about flavour and how new varieties are designed to give consumers what they’re looking for, you can’t miss Dr Chow-Ming Lee, Consumer Sensory Lead at Bayer Crop Science, who’ll be speaking at Hort Connections 2019 in Melbourne.

Dr Lee’s research helps our industry to better understand what drives flavour, enabling Bayer Crop Science to breed new varieties that bring together complex chemical interactions and deliver a more enjoyable experience for consumers.

To hear more about Dr Lee’s work in his own words, take a look at this video interview with him on Facebook.

To register for Hort Connections 2019 online, visit the Hort Connections website. Hort Connections 2019 will run from 24-26 June 2019 at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre.

This post appeared in the AUSVEG Weekly Update published 5 February 2019. Subscribe to the Update using our online form to receive the latest industry news in your inbox every week!