Bridging the food security gap: an information-led approach to connect dietary nutrition, food composition and crop production

BACKGROUND: Food security is recognized as a major global challenge, yet human food-chain systems are inherently not geared towards nutrition, with decisions on crop and cultivar choice not informed by dietary composition. Currently, food compositional tables and databases (FCT/FCDB) are the primary information sources for decisions relating to dietary intake. However, these only present single mean values representing major components. Establishment of a systematic controlled vocabulary to fill this gap requires representation of a more complex set of semantic relationships between terms used to describe nutritional composition and dietary function.

RESULTS: We carried out a survey of 11 FCT/FCDB and 177 peer-reviewed papers describing variation in nutritional composition and dietary function for food crops to identify a comprehensive set of terms to construct a controlled vocabulary. We used this information to generate a Crop Dietary Nutrition Data Framework (CDN-DF), which incorporates controlled vocabularies systematically organized into major classes representing nutritional components and dietary functions. We demonstrate the value of the CDN-DF for comparison of equivalent components between crop species or cultivars, for identifying data gaps and potential for formal meta-analysis. The CDN-DF also enabled us to explore relationships between nutritional components and the functional attributes of food.

CONCLUSION: We have generated a structured crop dietary nutrition data framework, which is generally applicable to the collation and comparison of data relevant to crop researchers, breeders, and other stakeholders, and will facilitate dialogue with nutritionists. It is currently guiding the establishment of a more robust formal ontology. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry.