Cereal biofortification : strategies, challenges and benefits

Abstract

Under-nutrition is a key underlying cause of the 10 million child deaths each year—most of which are preventable and most of which occur in poor countries. The major direct causes of under-nutrition in poor developing countries are insufficient food intake and an unbalanced diet caused by lack of variety in available foods coupled with disease outbreaks. This study shows that the majority of children living in rural Burkina Faso are severely undernourished as a result of the low amount of food they consume, their lack of dietary diversity, and, consequently, their low intake of many macro- and micronutrients. Replacement of normal cereal staples with biofortified crops would not affect the amount of food consumed per se. However, the strategy of most biofortification programs is to add nutrients to the most profitable and highest yielding varieties available, which would address, to some extent, the issue of insufficient food availability. For biofortified cereals to make a broad impact on the nutritional status of undernourished children in rural Africa, ideally the predominant cereals consumed should be enhanced with multiple critical nutrients