Green biotechnology, nanotechnology and bio-fortification: perspectives on novel environment-friendly crop improvement strategies

Abstract

Food insecurity and malnutrition are prominent issues for this century. As the world's population continues to increase, ensuring that the earth has enough food that is nutritious too will be a difficult task. Today one billion people of the world are undernourished and more than a third are malnourished. Moreover, the looming threat of climate change is exasperating the situation even further. At the same time, the total acreage of arable land that could support agricultural use is already near its limits, and may even decrease over the next few years due to salination and desertification patterns resulting from climate change. Clearly, changing the way we think about crop production must take place on multiple levels. New varieties of crops must be developed which can produce higher crop yields with less water and fewer agricultural inputs. Besides this, the crops themselves must have improved nutritional qualities or become biofortified in order to reduce the chances of 'hidden hunger' resulting from malnourishment. It is difficult to envision the optimum way to increase crop production using a single uniform strategy. Instead, a variety of approaches must be employed and tailored for any particular agricultural setting. New high-impact technologies such as green biotechnology, biofortification, and nanotechnology offer opportunities for boosting agricultural productivity and enhancing food quality and nutritional value with eco-friendly manner. These agricultural technologies currently under development will renovate our world to one that can comfortably address the new directions, our planet will take as a result of climate change.

Insight into the Prospects for Nanotechnology in Wheat Biofortification

“…Agronomic biofortification has been considered as one of the efficient techniques increasing the mineral content in cereal crops at large scale. However, agronomic biofortification is not efficient to meet the expectations either due to poor quality of soil or due to less-efficient drainage system, and consequently, most of the applied fertilizers are wasted [ 23 ]. A loss of around 40–70%, 80–90%, and 50–90% of applied N, P, and K fertilizers respectively have been reported previously [ 14 ].…”

An Experimental Evidence on Public Acceptance of Genetically Modified Food through Advertisement Framing on Health and Environmental Benefits, Objective Knowledge, and Risk Reduction

“…Ending food insecurity and malnutrition through eco-friendly means of agriculture production is a persistent worldwide priority [ 1 , 2 ]. The present worldwide strategy for prevailing food, nutrition, and eco-friendly production has not been able to sufficiently address the global challenges to ensure development toward food and environmental security [ 3 , 4 ].…”

“…Regardless of GMFs’ nutritional values and environmental benefits, the literature affirms the large controversies attached to GMF, based on perceived risks and limited public knowledge [ 1 , 3 ]. With the advent of scientific innovations, the global food industry has adopted the newly innovated food generics to address issues of food sovereignty and security [ 1 , 2 ]. GMF products have saturated the worldwide market and continued to rapidly expand as an industry owing to the technically demonstrated innovations in GMF [ 13 ].…”

O Mercado de Bioaditivos para a Indústria de Alimentos

“…Portanto, um relatório recentemente destaca que o mercado dos produtos fermentados no período de 2016-2024 deverá crescer a 4,6% ao ano, chegando a US$ 81,14 bilhões no ano de 2024, com um volume de comercialização correspondente de 85,66 milhões de toneladas. Dentre as companhias-líder do mercado global de fermentação, vale citar: BASF SE, Amano Enzyme Inc, The Dow Chemical Company, Cargill Inc, Archer Daniels Midland, DuPont Danisco A/S, Ajinomoto Company Incorporation e Evonik Industries 17 . Na sequência, abordaremos os aditivos "biotec" mais comercialmente relevantes.…”