BIOFORTIFICATION

BIOFORTIFICATION

Author Name : Narlagadda Priyanka, Manoj Kumar Pandey

ABSTRACT

Worldwide around 1.9 billion people are overweight and 462 million are underweight. Around 41 million children are facing overweight or obese, while 159 million are stunted. Unbalanced diet habits of the people is the main reason for the malnutrition of the people. To mitigate the malnutrition problem the nutrition in the food is to be increased, that is done through the biofortification, Biofortification is done through conventional method, agronomic method, and genetic engineering methods. Many biofortified varieties have been developed by the biofortification process. The government also made initiative to improve the nutrition in food of different crops by harvest plus. Nowadays the nutrients in food is increased by food processing so to avoid these externally adding nutrients, biofortification helps, because in biofortification we try to increase nutrients in the seed itself. Biofortification is successful when it meets the demand of increased micronutrients for the health of people, high yield for farmers, good taste and colour for consumer’s acceptance.

Keywords: Biofortification, Malnutrition, Micronutrients, Harvest Plus, Breeding, Hidden hunger, Supplementation, Anaemia.