Pflanzenzüchtung und moderne Kulturmaßnahmen. Fortschritt oder Rückschritt?

The progress in agriculture during the last 25 years is undisputed as far as a considerable rise in yield and in ‘external’ quality of crops are concerned. From the consumer's view the latter may be regarded more as ‘cosmetic’ quality. However, for this progress we have to pay quite a heavy price. It justifies the question if the loss of nutritional and phytohygienic quality associated with maximum yield in plant crops must be looked upon as a real backward step of our present economic-chemical system in agriculture. Our special research interests emphasize quality problems of vegetable and fruit. The retrogression has been proved in different fields by experimental findings, analytical data, nutritional observations or by experiments with small animals. Unfortunately, plant constituents, essential for human nutrition, were often lost from selection- and breeding-programmes for centuries: maximum yield and giant fruits. In some special cases — such as onesided human diets — it led to nutritional deficiencies and to severe health problems e.g. pellagra, amongst maizeating populations. US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently took preliminary measures in America against newly bred cultivars of inferior nutritional value and against those new cultivars possessing toxic substances in unacceptable concentrations. These objections referred to new cultivars of potatoes used for chip production, to carrots, tomatoes, beans, cabbages, wheat and peanuts. On the other hand, in Germany a group of people with self-interest and their subordinates are trying to prevent all our efforts to evaluate the ECE-standards of quality with the aim to give preference to most valuable cultivars of good taste and rich in plant constituents such as Vitamin C. In Germany some low horticultural stations testing cultivars etc. do not care about criteria of consumers' interest in strawberries such as good taste and high contents of vitamins. High yield and effectiveness in picking are the single criteria worth to be considered. Criteria of consumers' interest are even cut out by German officials, setting aside taste- and smell-tests from quality control of imported vegetables and fruit at the German frontiers. Our 12 years fertilizer experiments, chiefly with vegetables, including analytical interpretations resulted in high yield when mineral fertilizers (NPK) were applied, much lower ones when organic manures were used. However, the latter brought much higher contents in valuable plant constituents and much lower contents of substances with detrimental effects to human health. High amounts of nitrogen often have detrimental effects on ‘external’ quality and on the ‘Biological Value’ of vegetables and fruit. In addition to that they obviously favour the susceptibility to plant diseases and certain insect pests. We already warned of DDT in 1952 and in 1957 moreover of persistent organochlorides generally, but especially of the use of aldrin, dieldrin and heptachlor as seed dressing in carrots. These followed from te results of comparing organoleptic, analytical and residue-investigations combined with animal tests. We have also given warnings of 2,4-D-containing growth-regulators in the same publication due to harm to the offspring of Wistar rats. In 1964 — likely as consequence of our publications — Sweden prohibited the use of aldrin and dieldrin for seed dressing — I believe it was the first country in the world — followed by Norway in 1965. Both countries announced in 1970 a total prohibition of aldrin and dieldrin for all uses being followed for all other organochlorides lindane apart for special uses. Only in 1974 the Federal Republic of Germany anounced a prohibition of dieldrin, chlordan and isodrin. Already in 1971 restrictions of some organochlorides e.g. of aldrin, DDT, endrine, heptachlor, lindane and toxaphene have been published. In Great Britain there are no prohibitions of organochlorides, but restrictions for use. Up to 1968 we already established conclusively, that our toxicological registrations taking only the chemical itself in consideration apart of other preparations and apart of a passage through the plant to be treated, is absolutely without realism. There is no relation to practical use in agriculture and horticulture. The same is true for the tolerances and their safety being based on a registration procedure that is unreal and more reassuring than protective. No reaction to our warning has been noticed yet, though the situation may be looked at as clearly retrograde. A reform of the registration in the way described which includes the so called ‘translocation’-toxicity should be regarderd a condition ‘sine qua non’ taking an effective protection of the population into account.