Biofortification of Crops: An Avenue to Alleviate Malnutrition

Abstract

Modern day agriculture is a boon to strengthen the adequate food supply to masses in terms of meeting energy requirements. Whereas, it also caused major dependence on few staple crops with low dietary diversity particularly of micronutirents and resulted in high malnutrition or “hidden hunger” especially in Asian and African countries. Micronutrients deficiencies are inevitable among poor sections due to their non affordability to diversify their diets with adequate amounts of fruits, vegetables or animal-source foods that contain large amounts of micronutrients. Globally, over two-thirds of the population lack one or more essential mineral elements mainly Fe, Zn and Vitamin A which retards normal growth and development process. To combat micronutrient deficiencies there is need to explicitly reorient agriculture to promote human health together with improving production levels of staple crops, therefore, crop biofortification promises the long-term and better nutritional accessibility to rural unprivileged masses at doorstep in very cost-effective manner.