Biofortification
Come, know more with us about Biofortification - powerful tool of science to feed the future
Approximately one-third of the world’s population suffers from severe vitamin and mineral deficiencies, jeopardizing their health and hindering productivity. Micronutrient deficiencies (or “hidden hunger”) afflict poor rural people in low and middle-income nations in particular. Their low earnings and restricted access to food result in nutritionally insufficient meals that are monotonous.
Micronutrient deficiency is also linked to the rapidly growing obesity and non-communicable disease crisis. At the heart of the problem are poor-quality diets that rely mainly on highly processed, nutrient-deficient foods.
about Biofortification
Biofortification is the process of increasing the amount of essential vitamins, provitamins, and minerals in crops in order to improve people’s nutritional status. The process involves conventional methods of crop breeding to identify varieties that contain specific nutrients in high concentrations, which are then crossbred with high-yielding varieties to develop biofortified crops with high levels of, for instance, zinc or betacarotene, as well as other productivity qualities desired by farmers.
Biofortification of staple crops is an efficient way to reach a large number of rural, underprivileged people. Recurrent expenditures are minimal after the initial outlay of capital. Biofortification of staple crops is a low-cost approach to reaching tens of millions of people on a sustainable basis.
There are several advantages to Biofortification.
- Biofortification uses food staples grown and consumed by low-income households.
- Biofortification requires a one-time investment. The idea of biofortification is to create seeds that fortify themselves, keeping costs low and allowing germplasm - the living tissues from which plants are grown - to be shared globally, making it highly cost-effective.
- Biofortification is a sustainable practice: long after people have forgotten about biofortification farmers continue to grow and eat their biofortified crops- now thought as just "crops"
- Biofortification serves the most vulnerable populations in the country, who live in distant rural regions with little access to - or money for - commercially marketed fortified crops.
- We can feed the world with biofortification, as it produces higher yields while also being environmentally friendly.
