An international team of researchers funded by the nation's peak horticulture body discovered broccoli sprouts can lower the incidence of bladder cancer in rats by more than half.

This study builds on past evidence that vegetables from the cabbage family containing glucosinolates stimulate the body’s defence mechanisms against cancer.

More than 300,000 people worldwide are annually diagnosed with what is the fourth most common cancer in men and the eighth most common in women.

Now scientists hope to look at ways of growing mature broccoli with high levels of glucosinolate compounds.

New Zealand scientists Carolyn Lister from Crop and Food Research and Rex Munday, from AgResearch collaborated with two United States researchers and another from New Zealand to arrive at these findings.

It was funded by Horticulture Australia Limited (HAL) under its Vital Vegetables program.

“We were interested in the results of the study from the perspective of developing vegetables with elite characteristics,” Dr Lister said.

“The fact that we’ve shown this extract can cut the development of bladder cancer in rats is great news for our broccoli and Vital Vegetables programs since the compounds, known as glucosinolates, are also present in the mature broccoli plant, and one of the aims of our research is to produce conventionally-bred broccoli with naturally high levels of them.”

The researchers’ latest experiment, the findings of which were recently published in the prestigious international journal Cancer Research, showed that this is indeed the case.