Cultivation of Goitrogenous and Non-Goitrogenous Cabbage

Abstract

RESULTS of earlier work on the goitrogenous properties of plants^1–3 supported the assumption that goitrogenous activity of vegetable foodstuffs, particularly that of Brassica species, depends to a large extent on the content of sulphur compounds as goitrogenous substances. Therefore, in an attempt to supply experimental evidence for the relationship between cabbage goitrogenicity and the intake and rate of utilization of sulphates from nutrient environment, cabbage (Brassica oleracea, var. capitata, subsp. Amager) was cultivated in pure silica sand (SiO₂), in vegetation pots, by means of nutrient solutions in which only the sulphate content was made to vary. The results of the first experiment in this series had confirmed the above assumption, namely, that goitrogenous activity of the cabbage increased in relation to the sulphate content in the nutrient solution^4,5. However, efforts to grow cabbage without goitrogenous properties had failed. In the second experiment I endeavoured to grow both the goitrogenous and the non-goitrogenous variants of cabbage side by side. The same species of cabbage was again grown in vegetation pots with silica sand by means of nutrient solutions. The composition of the solutions for variants I and II is given in Table 1.