Language
Country/Area
No result found
The Secret of Golden Rice: How Does This Improved Crop Fight Vitamin A Deficiency?
Vitamin A deficiency is an issue that cannot be ignored in global nutrition and health issues, especially in low- and middle-income countries. To solve this problem, scientists have proposed a concept called "biofortification", a strategy that hopes to improve the nutritional value of crops through crop breeding.
Biofortification, which focuses on improving the nutritional value of crops while they are growing, rather than adding nutrients when foods are processed, is a major advance for the rural poor.
Traditional nutrition fortification methods mostly rely on fortified foods available on the market, which is not friendly to rural areas with limited economic conditions. It can be said that biofortification is an emerging solution to micronutrient deficiencies. According to estimates by the World Health Organization, biofortification has the potential to help 200 million people escape anaemia caused by iron deficiency.
How to implement bioaugmentation
Biofortification can be implemented through selective breeding. Scientists mainly search for various naturally nutritious crops in seeds or gene banks, and then cross them with high-yield crops to produce high-yield and high-nutrient crops. Nutritional value of seeds.For example, bread wheat high in iron and zinc has been successfully developed through radiation breeding, an approach that is widely adopted because it is relatively uncontroversial.
Golden Rice is an example of a biotech crop designed to combat vitamin A deficiency. By taking genes from soil bacteria and corn, the latest version of Golden Rice significantly increases the amount of beta-carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A.
Application in low- and middle-income countries
Deficiencies in multiple micronutrients, including vitamin A, zinc and iron, are common in low- and middle-income countries. These deficiencies can lead to a range of health problems, including vision loss, a weakened immune system, slowed growth, and impaired cognitive development. The rural poor mainly rely on staple foods such as rice, wheat and corn, which often lack the necessary micronutrients.
In a trial in Mozambique, eating sweet potatoes enriched with beta-carotene reduced the incidence of vitamin A deficiency in children by 24%.
For example, in a randomized clinical trial in India, the consumption of pearl millet, which is rich in iron and zinc, had a significant effect on improving the iron status of school-age children. Furthermore, this strategy is more widely accepted than processed fortified foods or supplements because it is relatively cost-effective.
Study of high-income countries
In high-income countries, researchers such as scientists at the University of Warwick are also exploring how to increase the selenium content of British cereals, with the hope of developing selenium-fortified cereals for use in bread.
Challenges
Despite the attention paid to biofortification, backlash against genetically modified foods still exists. Genetically modified crops such as Golden Rice sometimes face difficulties in market acceptance, especially when their appearance or taste differences from traditional crops may alarm consumers.
For example, foods high in vitamin A tend to be dark yellow or orange, which may be off-putting to a market accustomed to eating white corn.
In addition, whether the traits of certain improved crops meet consumer demand determines their market prospects. Whether farmers and consumers can be persuaded to grow and eat these crops is also a challenge. Therefore, in addition to improving the cultivation characteristics of crops, public health education must also enable consumers to understand the benefits of these foods.
However, critics point out that by concentrating more nutrients through fortification of a few staple foods, it may further simplify the human diet and make the already lack of diversity in the diet even more difficult. This raises the question of whether biofortification could be used as a complementary strategy to improve dietary diversity in low- and middle-income countries.
ConclusionAs biofortification technology develops, it is demonstrating its potential for combating micronutrient deficiencies. However, how to ensure dietary diversity while seeking improvements will become an important issue for future development. Will future progress bring about fundamental changes in our dietary structure?
