Global leaders and experts need to integrate biofortification and other available options to fight the menace of vitamin and mineral deficiencies that is afflicting the poor, says the Director-General of HarvestPlus, Dr. Howarth Bouis.
A statement issued by the HarvestPlus and made available to Daily Trust said that currently, the most common interventions being used in fighting vitamin and mineral deficiencies include dietary diversity, fortification of staples such as flour and sugar, and supplementation. While increasing dietary diversity is an ideal longer-term solution; that requires increases in income. Fortification and supplementation on the other hand are relatively expensive, with supplementation with vitamin and mineral capsules alone receiving an estimated $5 billion per year.
"Biofortification therefore provides a more cost-effective, cheaper, and easier access to these nutrients, and integrating it in current crop improvement efforts could have more impact," says Bouis in a meeting with the Director General of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Dr. Nteranya Sanginga.
Generally, in the developing countries, vitamin A deficiency, for instance, remains a major bottleneck to improved nutrition with approximately 250,000 to 500,000 malnourished children going blind each year, and half of whom die within a year of becoming blind.
In Nigeria, vitamin A deficiency afflicts almost 20% of pregnant women and about 30% of children under five. Apart from lowering immunity, vitamin A deficiency results in economic losses in gross domestic product of about $1.5 billion, according to the Nigerian government estimates.
Bouis says, "Unless we are willing to change the way we play the game, we cannot win the battle against malnutrition."
Last year, the Nigerian Varietal Release Committee released three provitamin A cassava varieties that are yellowish in color to help fight vitamin A deficiency.
The development of the varieties was led by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture using conventional breeding methods with funding support from HarvestPlus. The National Root Crops Research Institute in Umudike was the Nigerian partner.
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