Micronutrient malnutrition is an important issue in the developing countries especially in Asia and Africa where millions of school-going children and pregnant women are affected. Poor people are more exposed to risks of malnutrition and hidden hunger due to intake of carbohydrate rich but micronutrient deficient plant based food. The expansion of high yielding but micronutrient poor cultivars further intensified the malnutrition. The existing approaches viz ., supplementation and food fortification of staple food with minerals and vitamins can address the issue of adequate nutrition security. But supplementation and fortification is neither feasible for each nutrient specially iron nor viable due to recurrent cost. Recently, genetic bio-fortification of crops is emerged as self-targeted and non-recurrent approach to address the micronutrient malnutrition. Most of the traditional breeding approaches were limited due to non-availability of enough genetic variation in the crossable genepools. Additionally, it also lacks the modulation of target gene expression underlying the micronutrient accumulation. At this juncture, genetic engineering based food biofortification is promising way to address the hidden hunger especially, where breeding is not rewarding due to lack of genetic variability. Genetic modification through gene technology is swift and accurate method to develop nutrient denser crops without any recurrent investment as compared to different strategies.

No abstract

No abstract

The effect of hot air drying on nutritional profile of fruit leathers will help in redefining the importance as a nutritionally concentrated snack. The mango, strawberry fruit pulp was dehydrated at 40, 50, 60, 70ºC in cabinet dryer to standardize the drying temperature with respect to quality attributes. The drying rate curves at mentioned drying air temperature showed that 60ºC drying air temperature was suitable for obtaining good sensory quality dried leather with end moisture content of 16 to 19% for a drying period of 7 hours. Therefore, 60oC temperature was selected for nutritional profiling of fruit pulp vs fruit leather. The proximate composition of mango and strawberry leather (carbohydrate- 58.26/ 73.31%, protein- 1.58/2.95%, Ash- 1.98/2.11%, dietary fibre- 14.06/17.13%) was found to be superior compared to their fruit pulps (carbohydrate- 14.39/11.12%, protein- 0.61/2.64%, crude fibre-0.79/2.9%, ash-0.52/0.51%).