Biofortification - a sustainable agricultural strategy for reducing micronutrient malnutrition in the global south.

By H. Bouis, Ross M. Welch. 2010

869 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Minerals and vitamins in food staples eaten widely by the poor may be increased either through conventional plant breeding or through use of transgenic techniques, a process known as biofortification. HarvestPlus seeks to develop and distribute cultivars of food staples (rice [Oryza sativa L.], wheat [Triticum aestivum L.], maize [Zea mays L.], cassava [Manihot esculenta Crantz], pearl millet [Pennisetum americanum Leeke], beans [Phaseolus vulgaris L.], sweet potato [Ipomoea batatas L.]) that are high in Fe, Zn, and provitamin A through an interdisciplinary global alliance of scientific institutions and implementing agencies in developing and developed countries. Biofortified crops offer a rural-based intervention that, by design, initially reaches these more remote populations, which comprise a majority of the undernourished in many countries, and then penetrates to urban populations as production surpluses are marketed. Thus, biofortification complements fortification and supplementation programs, which work best in centralized urban areas and then reach into rural areas with good infrastructure. Initial investments in agricultural research at a central location can generate high recurrent benefits at low cost as adapted biofortified cultivars become widely available in countries across time at low recurrent costs. Overall, three things must happen for biofortification to be successful. First, the breeding must be successful—high nutrient density must be combined with high yields and high profitability. Second, efficacy must be demonstrated—the micronutrient status of human subjects must be shown to improve when consuming the biofortified cultivars as normally eaten. Third, the biofortified crops must be adopted by farmers and consumed by those suffering from micronutrient malnutrition in significant numbers.

Subfields: Plant Science, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/97d2fa97fc46e2c5313ca097d56f93c981aafca3

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Citations in the corpus

Worldwide Genetic Diversity for Mineral Element Concentrations in Rice Grain (2015, neutral): “…concentration of nutrients in their edible portions has been proposed as a possible solution to alleviate global malnutrition (e.g., Graham et al., 1999, 2001; Gregorio et al., 2000; White and Broadley, 2005; Bouis and Welch, 2010; Masuda et al., 2013; Rawat et al., 2013; Murgia et al., 2013).”
Zinc-enriched fertilisers as a potential public health intervention in Africa (2015, background): “1; White and Broadley 2009; Bouis and Welch 2010).”
QTL mapping for grain zinc and iron concentrations and zinc efficiency in a tetraploid and hexaploid wheat mapping populations (2017, background): “Due to widespread poverty, the majority of people in the developing world rely on cereal-based foods as a source of energy and protein intake, and the animal-based food products with high level of micronutrients are very rarely consumed (Cakmak 2008; Bouis and Welch 2010).”
Genetic Analysis of Visually Scored Orange Kernel Color in Maize (2013, background): “This approach has the potential to be highly sustainable and cost effective when biofortified crops are continuously consumed and grown year after year at recurrent costs lower than the initial costs of varietal development (Bouis and Welch, 2010; Welch and Graham, 2004).”
Seed systems smallholder farmers use (2016, background): “New seed is linked to strategies for raising nutrition, as with biofortified varieties selected for elevated micro-nutrient levels (Bouis and Welch 2010).”
Enhancing grain iron content of rice by the application of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (2018, background): “Rice feeds almost 50–58% of the world’s population, hence it can be considered as a global grain (Zeng et al. 2010), but it is considerably deficient in micronutrients especially iron (Bouis and Welch 2010).”
Toxic Heavy Metal and Metalloid Accumulation in Crop Plants and Foods. (2016, background): “, the goal of fighting nutrient malnutrition (so-called hidden hunger) by developing crop varieties with higher micronutrient densities (10, 131).”
Zinc and its importance for human health: An integrative review (2013, background): “[99] These include both agronomic and genetic bio-fortification of edible crops.[100,101] Agronomic bio-fortification can be achieved by increasing soil zinc phytoavailability or by applying zinc fertilizers.”