Plants and Human Well Being

Plants provide not only the foundation of food, clothing, and shelter essential for human existence, but also some of the key raw materials for transcendence and abstraction through music, art, and spirituality. Since antiquity, we have co-evolved with plants and their derivative products, with each exerting a domesticating force on the other. It is, for example, impossible to think of our modern life without its plant-based accompaniments in the form of cotton, sugar, bread, coffee, and wood. Yet they are so ubiquitous we may forget they all derive from plants discovered, domesticated, bred, and farmed for millennia in a never-ending pursuit to improve our wellbeing. We will examine a few examples of intersection between plants and human wellbeing from a horticultural point of view, including an example of the medicinal properties of onion and garlic.

Irwin Goldman has been at UW-Madison since 1992, and has been chair of the Dept. of Horticulture from 2011 to 20`18. His research program focuses on vegetable breeding and genetics with an emphasis on plant secondary metabolites that have some potential value for human health and wellbeing.

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