Crop biofortification for iron (Fe), zinc (Zn) and vitamin A with transgenic approaches

Abstract

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.

The dual benefit of a dominant mutation in Arabidopsis IRON DEFICIENCY TOLERANT1 for iron biofortification and heavy metal phytoremediation

“…A plant mapping population was built by crossing homozygous idt1 and L. erecta, according to the MutMap protocol (Lehrbach et al, 2017). Tolerant phenotypes of the F2 population were observed under -Fe suggesting the trait is dominant.…”

“…Biofortification of plants through genetic engineering to improve Fe concentration is a direct approach that can be used to alleviate Fe deficiency. Genetic engineering has been applied to modify Fe transporters to generate Fe‐enriched crops (Kumar et al , ; Masuda et al , ; Narayanan et al , ).…”

Integrating genomics for chickpea improvement: achievements and opportunities

“…Micronutrient malnutrition is becoming a significant concern in developing countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa where several million children and pregnant women are affected (Kumar et al 2019b). In this context, it is important to develop biofortified chickpea varieties that can address micronutrient deficiencies.…”

Pulse Crop Genetics for a Sustainable Future: Where We Are Now and Where We Should Be Heading

“…For example, yields of the globally traded legume soybean have been reported to have decreased as much as 40% due in part to biotic and abiotic stresses, including drought, which could also reduce the seed quality of the crop (Githiri et al, 2006;Thao and Tran, 2011). On a positive note, advances in genetic and metabolic engineering over the past two decades have laid a solid foundation for fundamental and applied research in soybeans, especially to enhance its tolerance toward climatic stresses (Yang et al, 2017;Park et al, 2019) and improve its nutritional value as part of devoting significant efforts to securing the global need for biofortified food (Bouis and Saltzman, 2017;Kumar et al, 2019). It is important to note that extensive genetic and genomic analyses have also been undertaken on other leguminous species over the course of the last decade, with an increasing number of web resources related to legume genetics and genomics are becoming available (Table 2).…”