Biofortification is an effective and economical method to improve the micronutrient content of crops, particularly staples that sustain human populations in developing countries. Whereas conventional fortification requires artificial additives, biofortification involves the synthesis or accumulation of nutrients by plants at source. Little is known about the relative merits of biofortification and artificial fortification in terms of nutrient bioaccessibility and bioavailability, and much depends on the biochemical nature of the nutrient, which can promote or delay uptake, and determine how efficiently different nutrients are transported through the blood, stored, and utilized. Data from the first plants biofortified with minerals and vitamins provide evidence that the way in which nutrients are presented can affect how they are processed and utilized in the human body. The latest studies on the effects of the food matrix, processing and storage on nutrient transfer from biofortified crops are reviewed, as well as current knowledge about nutrient absorption and utilization.

Carotenoids are important dietary nutrients with health-promoting effects. The biofortification of staple foods with carotenoids provides an efficient delivery strategy but little is known about the fate and distribution of carotenoids supplied in this manner. The chicken provides a good model of human carotenoid metabolism so we supplemented the diets of laying hens using two biofortified maize varieties with distinct carotenoid profiles and compared the fate of the different carotenoids in terms of distribution in the feed, the hen’s livers and the eggs. We found that after a period of depletion, pro-vitamin A (PVA) carotenoids were preferentially diverted to the liver and relatively depleted in the eggs, whereas other carotenoids were transported to the eggs even when the liver remained depleted. When retinol was included in the diet, it accumulated more in the eggs than the livers, whereas PVA carotenoids showed the opposite profile. Our data suggest that a transport nexus from the intestinal lumen to the eggs introduces bottlenecks that cause chemically-distinct classes of carotenoids to be partitioned in different ways. This nexus model will allow us to optimize animal feed and human diets to ensure that the health benefits of carotenoids are delivered in the most effective manner.

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Carolight® is a transgenic maize variety that accumulates extraordinary levels of carotenoids, including those with vitamin A activity. The development of Carolight® maize involved the technical implementation of a novel combinatorial transformation method, followed by rigorous testing for transgene expression and the accumulation of different carotenoid molecules. Carolight® was envisaged as a way to improve the nutritional health of human populations that cannot access a diverse diet, but this ultimate humanitarian application can only be achieved after extensive testing for safety, agronomic performance and nutritional sufficiency. In this article, we chart the history of Carolight® maize focusing on its development, extensive field testing for agronomic performance and resistance to pests and pathogens, and feeding trials to analyze its impact on farm animals (and their meat/dairy products) as well as animal models of human diseases. We also describe more advanced versions of Carolight® endowed with pest-resistance traits, and other carotenoidenhanced maize varieties originating from the same series of initial transformation experiments. Finally we discuss the further steps required before Carolight® can fulfil its humanitarian objectives, including the intellectual property and regulatory constraints that lie in its path.

Obesity is a worldwide epidemic characterized by excessive fat accumulation, associated with multiple comorbidities and complications. Emerging evidence points to gut microbiome as a driving force in the pathogenesis of obesity. Vinegar intake, a traditional remedy source of exogenous acetate, has been shown to improve glycemic control and to have anti-obesity effects. New functional foods may be developed by supplementing traditional food with probiotics. B. coagulans is a suitable choice because of its resistance to high temperatures. To analyze the possible synergic effect of Vinegar and B. coagulans against the metabolic alterations induced by a high fat diet (HFD), we fed twelve-week-old C57BL/6 mice with HFD for 5 weeks after 2 weeks of acclimation on a normal diet. Then, food intake, body weight, blood biochemical parameters, histology and liver inflammatory markers were analyzed. Although vinegar drink, either alone or supplemented with B. coagulans, reduced food intake, attenuated body weight gain and enhanced glucose tolerance, only the supplemented drink improved the lipid serum profile and prevented hepatic HFD-induced overexpression of CD36, IL-1β, IL-6, LXR and SREBP, thus reducing lipid deposition in the liver. The beneficial properties of the B. coagulans-supplemented vinegar appear to be mediated by a reduction in insulin and leptin circulating levels.

In many developing countries, maize is both a staple food crop and a widely-used animal feed. However, adventitious colonisation or damage caused by insect pests allows fungi to penetrate the vegetative parts of the plant and the kernels, the latter resulting in mycotoxin contamination. Maize seeds contaminated with fumonisins and other mycotoxins pose a serious threat to both humans and livestock. However, numerous studies have reported a significant reduction in pest damage, disease symptoms and fumonisin levels in maize hybrids expressing the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) gene cry1Ab, particularly in areas where the European corn borer is prevalent. When other pests are also present, the cry1Ab gene alone offers insufficient protection, and combinations of insecticidal genes are required to reduce damage to plants caused by insects. The combination of Cry1Ab protein with other Cry proteins (such as Cry1F) or Vip proteins has reduced the incidence of pests and, indirectly, mycotoxin levels. Maize hybrids expressing multiple Bt genes, such as SmartStax®, are less susceptible to damage by insects, but mycotoxin levels are not routinely and consistently compared in these crops. Bt maize has a greater economic impact on Fusarium toxins than aflatoxins. The main factors that determine the effectiveness of Bt hybrids are the type of pest and the environmental conditions, but the different fungal infection pathways must also be considered. An alternative strategy to reduce mycotoxin levels in crops is the development of transgenic plants expressing genes that protect against fungal infection or reduce mycotoxin levels by in situ detoxification. In this review article, we summarise what is known about the relationship between the cultivation of Bt maize hybrids and contamination levels with different types of mycotoxins.

Skin color in poultry is achieved by the addition of natural or synthetic pigments to feed. Crops used routinely in feed formulations offer an alternative cost-effective strategy to replace color additives if they are biofortified with sufficient levels of carotenoids. We tested the hypothesis that high-carotenoid (HC) maize, which was genetically engineered to accumulate high levels of β-carotene, lutein and zeaxanthin in the endosperm, can replace carotenoid additives in poultry feed by performing two feeding trials using diets incorporating different maize lines with diverse carotenoid compositions: control (wild-type M37W, the parental line), HC, and standard yellow commercial maize supplemented with color additives (marigold flowers and red paprika extracts). The effects of dietary treatments on growth performance, health parameters, color evolution and carotenoid distribution were determined. We found that chickens fed on the HC diet grew normally and developed similar pigmentation to animals fed on a commercial diet supplemented with color additives, although yellowness was significantly higher in the commercial diet due to the high concentration of yellow xanthophylls. Lightness scores in chickens fed on the control, HC and commercial diets

High-carotenoid (HC) maize, a biofortified staple crop which accumulates β-carotene, β-cryptoxanthin, lutein and zeaxanthin, was used as a feed component in a chicken feeding trial to assess the bioavailability of provitamin A (PVA) carotenoids in the kernel matrix compared to the synthetic and natural color additives routinely used in the poultry industry. We found that the PVA carotenoids in HC maize were not metabolized in the same manner: β-carotene was preferentially converted into retinol in the intestine whereas β-cryptoxanthin accumulated in the liver. We also considered the effect of zeaxanthin on the absorption of PVA carotenoids because zeaxanthin is the major carotenoid component of HC maize. We found that chickens fed on diets with low levels of zeaxanthin accumulated higher levels of retinol in the liver, suggesting that zeaxanthin might interfere with the absorption of β-carotene, although this observation was not statistically significant. Our results show that HC maize provides bioavailable carotenoids, including PVA carotenoids, and is suitable for use as a feed component.