Love it or hate it, broccoli, which is  touted as a superfood for its health benefits, is about to become even more super.

Superfoods are considered foods that are abundant in nutrients considered beneficial to health.   Broccoli, which is a Brassica, is rich in phenolic compounds, including certain flavonoids, which are associated with a lower risk of coronary heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and several types of cancer.

University of Illinois researchers have identified the genes that control the accumulation of phenolic compounds in broccoli.  They accomplished this by crossed two broccoli lines and tested their progeny in terms of total phenolic content and their ability to neutralize oxygen radicals in experiments using live cells.  (Oxygen radicals are a process of oxidation, which contributes to cellular aging).

By identifying the genes involved in accumulating these compounds, the researchers are one step closer to breeding broccoli and related Brassica vegetables like kale and cabbage with mega-doses of phenolic compounds. Phenolic compounds are flavorless and stable, meaning the vegetables can be cooked without losing health-promoting qualities.

Once these vegetables are consumed, the phenolic compounds are absorbed and targeted to certain areas of the body or concentrated in the liver. Flavonoids spread through the bloodstream, reducing inflammation through their antioxidant activity, and in doing so, reducing the risk of these degenerative diseases, the researchers say.

"These are things we can't make ourselves, so we have to get them from our diets," says Jack Juvik, a geneticist involved in the study "The compounds don't stick around forever, so we need to eat broccoli or some other Brassica vegetable every three or four days to lower the risk of cancers and other degenerative diseases."

It will take awhile for the breeding program to yield these vegetables that are even higher in phenolic compounds, but the result should pay off in terms of even better disease-fighting vegetables, the researchers say of their study, which appears in Molecular Breeding.