著者

日笠 志津

出版者

日本食生活学会

雑誌

日本食生活学会誌 (ISSN:13469770)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.24, no.2, pp.68-82, 2013-09-30 (Released:2013-11-02)

参考文献数

53

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Japan used to be an agricultural country, which traditional agricultural method has been organic farming. Health of farmers, environmental preservation and fertility existed at that time. The fact that the introduction of agrichemicals and fertilizers has rapidly expanded production output must be appreciated. On the other hand, environmental pollutions, occurrence of health hazards and food pollution became aggravated. Consumers of organically-grown vegetables often believe that these products are healthful and taste better than conventionally-grown vegetables. However, the vegetable quality like the nutrient content and the organoleptic characteristics are unproven. The purpose of this study is to examine the vegetables quality that farmers cultivated. We obtained lettuces, komatsunas ( Japanese mustard spinaches ) and spinaches from farmers in a few prefectures, and then performed nutritional values and the sensory assessment tests on each vegetable.1 ) In samples cultivated in multiple prefectures for this study, the difference caused by various cultural conditions showed no significant differences in terms of moisture, ash content, minerals, vitamins and free amino acids contents. The data did not show any nutritional superiority of organically grown agricultural product.2 ) “The overall evaluation” in lettuces, komatsunas and spinaches was the most strongly associated with the “taste” among “appearance”, “aroma”, “texture” and “taste”. “Aftertaste” was closely related to “The overall evaluation of taste”. These results suggest that cultivation technique is an important factor to grow vegetables of good quality.3 ) The quality in komatsunas shows that the difference of the variety had stronger effect than the difference between the cultivation techniques did.4 ) For each of the 3 years, the spinach that the same producer organically grew scored highly in almost every parameter of the sensory test. The results suggest that cultivation technique is likely to contribute vegetable quality.