CU and USDA lab given $3.5 million to fortify Third World staple crops

By Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.

To support their research into bolstering micronutrient content in classically bred staple crops grown in underdeveloped countries, Cornell agriculture faculty members and U.S. Department of Agriculture (Agriculture Research Service) scientists on campus have received a $3.5 million grant from HarvestPlus.

HarvestPlus, a newly funded program within the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), is a joint research effort between the CGIAR's International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), based in Cali, Colombia, and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), based in Washington, D.C. The award is part of a $25 million grant given on Oct. 14 to IFPRI and CIAT by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Glahn

Lei

Miller

Welch

"During the Green Revolution, scientists were successful at adding enough calories to diets to keep people from starving," said Ross Welch, a plant physiologist with the USDA's Plant, Soil and Nutrition Laboratory at Cornell and an adjunct professor of soil and crop science. "Now that we have enough calories, we need more nutrition. This part of the HarvestPlus consortia will examine how people can absorb those nutrients and how those nutrients are used in the human body."

At Cornell, the money will be used to conduct research in the laboratories of Dennis Miller, Cornell professor of food science, and Xingen Lei, Cornell professor of animal science. Ray Glahn, a research physiologist with the USDA's Federal Nutrition Laboratory on campus and an adjunct professor of food science, also will receive research funding.

Agricultural and nutritional scientists call this crop improvement process the "biofortification" of crops. The researchers will focus on adding, through classical breeding methods, iron, zinc and beta carotene, the precursor to vitamin A, into such staple crops as beans, cassava, maize, rice, sweet potatoes and wheat. Afterward, HarvestPlus collaborators will test the effectiveness of the added nutrients in micronutrient-deficient people in developing countries.

Malnutrition contributes to over half of child deaths in the developing world, and the World Health Organization estimates that nearly one-third of the world's population suffers from micronutrient deficiencies.

Even mild levels of micronutrient malnutrition can impair physical development and lower resistance to infectious diseases. Iron deficiency affects over 3 billion people in the Third World and is blamed for 100,000 maternal deaths during childbirth each year. Vitamin A deficiency causes blindness in more than 500,000 children each year and is a leading cause of child mortality, according to the World Health Organization.

"Adding healthier food to the agricultural research agenda is an idea whose time has come," said Joachim von Braun, director general of IFPRI, which is directing nutrition and policy research for HarvestPlus. "Together with conventional strategies for improving nutrition, such as fortification, supplementation and diversification of food in diets, this approach holds enormous potential. It will require a strong partnership among agriculture and nutrition specialists."

Starting in January, Glahn will be using cellular models in the laboratory to test and validate nutrient absorption data from the micronutrient-enhanced staple crops developed by plant breeders in the HarvestPlus program. "Just because a nutrient is in food doesn't mean your body can absorb it," said Glahn.

After Glahn examines cells in his laboratory, Lei and Miller will test how a human body absorbs the minerals and vitamins from enhanced plants. To do this, Miller and Lei will examine baby pigs, since those animals have a similar metabolism to humans. The scientists will examine the pigs' absorption of iron and the factors affecting digestion and nutrient retention. Said Lei, "Like humans, pigs sometimes get iron deficiency, and they benefit from the nutrients as well."