Ricardo Bressani | Biography

Ricardo Bressani is a prominent Central American food scientist who has contributed significantly to the knowledge of human nutrition and food production. Long associated with the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP), Bressani has focused his chief efforts toward increasing the availability of high quality foods for humans. His contributions include improving production of high nutrition foods; investigating the composition and nutritional value of basic foods such as maize, sorghum rice, beans, and amaranth; studying the effects of food processing on nutritional value; evaluating food storage techniques; and analyzing the efficient biological utilization of foods.

Ricardo Bressani Castignoli was born on September 28, 1926, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, to Primina (Castignoli), a homemaker, and César Bressani, a farmer. He obtained a B.S. degree from the University of Dayton (Ohio) in 1948. In 1951 he was awarded a master's degree from Iowa State University and began directing the food analysis laboratories at INCAP. Then two years old, INCAP had assessed the nutritional status of Central America, finding widespread malnutrition and a heavy reliance by Central Americans on cereals and legume grains. This first, brief association with INCAP stimulated Bressani's interest in the serious nutrition problems of populations in Central America.

In 1952 Bressani enrolled in Purdue University in Indiana, where he was a graduate research assistant at the Biochemical Research Institute and where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1956. He then returned to Guatemala to head INCAP's agricultural and food sciences division, a position that he held for 32 years. During this time, from 1963 to 1964, he was a visiting professor in the Department of Food Science at Rutgers State University in New Jersey; and in 1967 he was a visiting lecturer in the food science and nutrition department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Other positions he has held for INCAP include that of research coordinator from 1983 to 1988; research advisor in food science and agriculture from 1988 to 1992; and consultant in food science, agriculture and nutrition beginning in 1993.

Bressani conducted important studies regarding the nutritional value of resources already in abundance in Central America, such as Brazil nuts, rubber tree seeds and jicara seeds, caulote, jack beans, African palm, corozo, and buckwheat. These studies resulted from his concern that these resources held food value yet would vanish from the area because populations were ignorant of their nutritional value. The grain and vegetable amaranth, for instance, cultivated by Aztec, Mayan, and Inca civilizations, was rediscovered and converted into highly nutritional flour. In addition, Bressani's research on legumes not indigenous to Central America nor normally consumed by its populations--such as the jack bean and the cowpea--spurred agricultural production of some high-yield as well as highly nutritional beans. For instance, he obtained a protein isolate from the jack bean, uncovering it as a valuable food resource. The Central American Cooperative Program for the Improvement of Food Crops (PCCMCA) honored Bressani and his staff for their outstanding work in cereal and legume research.

As early as 1956, in Bressani's Ph.D. dissertation, he expressed concern about the nutritional problems of people whose diets consisted mainly of corn and beans. He conducted research into the effects of soil fertilization with minor elements on the yield and protein value of cereals and legumes. According to his dissertation, he was convinced that "in order to produce a corn of a high nutritive value, the ratio of germ to whole grain must be increased, or else the relative quantities of proteins other than zein should be increased in the endosperm." Eight years later at Purdue, scientist Edwin T. Mertz successfully isolated the Opaque-2 gene, the chemical-nutritive qualities of which follow the postulations in Bressani's dissertation. Subsequently, such organizations as INCAP, ICTA (Guatemala), and CIMMYT (Mexico) developed a superior maize called NUTRICTA. It was ready for agricultural production in October 1983.

Bressani has made numerous other contributions to nutrition and agriculture in Central America and has published over 450 articles in scientific journals. He is married to Alicia Herman, and they have seven children. He enjoys farming, horseback riding, reading, and photography.