Linking Agriculture with Health through Genetic and Agronomic Biofortification

Abstract

Malnutrition and associated health problems are partly related to minerals and vitamins deficiencies where anemia and stunting are the major diseases affecting nearly half of pregnant women and about 20% children under age of five, respectively in developing countries. Despite the significant progress made in recent decades, prevalence of stunting in Ethiopia remains high (44%, among children) that necessitate the country yet to make significant investment in nutrition and health. Strategies designed to overcome the problem range from micronutrient rich foods supplement to complementing foods with vegetables and fruits. However, such strategies are expensive as well as not sustainable to reach the poor households of developing countries. The persistence of the problem calls for agriculture based alternative solutions such as agronomic biofortification and micronutrients biofortification through plant breeding. Utilization of crop wild relatives, local landraces and old cultivars are proved to contain sufficient grain micronutrients and their utilization in breeding programs can solve the deficiency of micronutrients such as zinc and iron. Similarly, agronomic biofortification could improve grain Zn and Fe contents in several folds. Application methods and crop developmental stages during which fortification applied significantly determine the efficiency of fortification. Foliar application at heading and milking stages could accumulate very high Zn and Fe in cereal grains. The synergistic effect of genetic and agronomic fortification could also be utilized to produce Zn and Fe rich food crops. Hence, linking agriculture with nutrition and health could offer equitable, effective, sustainable and cheap solutions to micronutrients malnutrition and their deficiency related health problems.

The Role of Nanotechnology in the Fortification of Plant Nutrients and Improvement of Crop Production

“…Although plant breeding is the most practiced sustainable method in fortification [24,36,37], development of new genotypes enriched with micronutrient is a long-time venture [38]. In addition, available micronutrient in the soil limits the effectiveness of new genotypes in increasing micronutrient content [39,40].…”

Effects of zinc application strategy on zinc content and productivity of chickpea grown under zinc deficient soils

“…However, fertilizer delivery methods may vary in convenience, effectiveness and cost. Among many others, foliar spray, soil application and seed treatment are found to be effective application practices for some micronutrients (Melash et al, 2016). Each method has the potential to influence the extent of micronutrient concentration both in the treated plant directly and indirectly through enrichment of the seeds by micronutrient treatment of the parent (Johnson et al, 2005).…”

Iron fortification of food crops through nanofertilisation

“…While plant breeding is the most practiced economical and sustainable technique for nutrient fortification (Murgia et al 2012;Melash et al 2016), creating new genotypes is time-consuming (Prasad et al 2014). Also, the amount of accessible micronutrients in the soil is a limiting factor for micronutrient uptake by plants (Velu et al 2014).…”