The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which works to end malnutrition among more than two billion people worldwide, is expressing strong support  for enriching the micronutrient content of plants.

Cassava is a staple crop in Africa. The new variety promoted by CGIAR is more nutritious, contaning higher amounts of vitamin A, zinc, or iron. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

In technical terms, it is called biofortification: a nutrition-specific intervention designed to enhance the micronutrient content of foods through the use of agronomic practices and plant breeding.

The breeding is taking place at HarvestPlus, an international programme supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and at national agricultural research centres, mostly in developing countries.

The first nutritious crop, developed by African scientists and released in partnership with the Internal Potato Center (CIP), was the orange sweet potato, which has been effective in providing up to 100 percent of daily vitamin A needs for young children, according to CGIAR.

Six additional nutritious crops are now being developed through the use of conventional breeding methods: vitamin A-rich cassava and maize, iron-rich beans and pearl millet, and zinc-rich wheat and rice.

The first three crops are targeted to Africa and the rest to South Asia.

New varieties of the first four crops were launched in 2012, says CGIAR, with wheat and rice expected to follow later this year.

While it takes time to produce the amount of seed necessary to meet demand, up to half a million farmers will be growing these nutritious crops by year end, it predicts.

Asked how far plant breeding can go in resolving hunger and nutrition problems worldwide, Dr. Erick Boy, head of nutrition at HarvestPlus, told IPS, “Our focus is on hidden hunger, caused by not getting enough minerals and vitamins in the diet – that is the major hunger problem the world faces today.

“The six new varieties of staple crops we are developing are more nutritious—they contain higher amounts of vitamin A, zinc, or iron,” he added.

Lack of these nutrients is what causes widespread suffering and health problems, especially for women and children.

Boy said these crops will be distributed to more than three million farming households in seven countries in Africa and Asia by 2015.

“Not bad for a programme that started from scratch to develop these crops beginning only in 2003,” he noted.

When eaten regularly, these nutritious crops could provide on average 50 percent of vitamin A, zinc, or iron requirements. According to CGIAR, more than two billion people worldwide do not get enough of these crucial nutrients in their diets.

Deficiencies can lead to lower IQ, stunting, and blindness in children; increased susceptibility to disease for both children and adults; and higher health risks to mothers – and their infants – during childbirth.

According to the World Bank, malnourished children are more likely to drop out of school and have lower incomes as adults, thus reducing overall economic growth.

In its latest annual flagship publication The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) released here, FAO explains that unlike food fortification, which occurs during food processing, biofortification involves enriching the micronutrient content of plants.

Questions remain about the readiness of consumers to purchase biofortified foods, especially when they look or taste different from traditional varieties. But, FAO says, early evidence suggests that consumers are willing to buy them and may even pay a premium.

In Uganda, FAO discovered consumers were willing to pay as much for the orange-fleshed varieties of sweet potato as for the white varieties, even in the absence of a promotional campaign.

Similar results were found for nutritionally-enhanced orange maize in Zambia, where consumers did not confuse it with ordinary yellow or white maize. They were also willing to pay a premium when its introduction was accompanied by nutrition information.

Asked why the project targets Asia and Africa and not Latin America, CGIAR’s Dr. Boy said, “Our focus is on subSaharan Africa and South Asia because if you look at any map of hidden hunger, these are the regions marked in red.”

Latin American countries have done a better job of improving nutrition over the past two decades, he added. There are still, however, pockets where hidden hunger is a problem.

“So we are also working in this region. In fact, I am in Guatemala now to work with stakeholders to buy in to our high-iron beans and high zinc-maize initiative there. We anticipate that we could have varieties of two to three crops that are rich in iron and zinc to LAC farmers by 2015,” Boy added.

Meanwhile, in early June, the UK government granted £30 million [46.4 million dollars] to HarvestPlus to develop and deliver six nutritious crops to several million farming households in Africa and Asia.

The grant was announced at a high-level international meeting in London that brought together a range of partners to make strong political and financial commitments to improve nutrition globally.

In his opening remarks, British Prime Minister David Cameron said, “It has to be about doing things differently…For science, it’s about harnessing the power of innovation to develop better seeds, [and] more productive and nutritious crops.”

By Wambi Michael
Kampala, Mar 18 2013 (IPS)

Plant viruses are threatening the livelihoods of farmers and food security by attacking vital food crops in East and Central African countries. Cassava is the staple in most of these countries and it is one of the hardest hit crops.

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Uganda Farmers display diseased cassava tubers in Soroti Eastern Uganda. Credit Wambi Michael/IPS

By Wambi Michael
KAMPALA, Feb 13 2013 (IPS)

Unless African smallholder farmers, who comprise the majority of food growers on the continent, are given the tools and knowledge to cope with the increased occurrences of plant virus diseases, the livelihoods of millions will be at stake, according to Nteranya Sanginga, the director general of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture.

“Plant viruses are spreading rapidly to new places, frustrating efforts to boost the food security and livelihoods of millions of people. Poor smallholder farmers, who are the majority of food growers and the bulk of the population, are bearing the brunt of these virus diseases with their limited resources,” Sanginga told IPS.

Cassava mosaic disease (CMD), sweet potato virus disease, maize streak virus and cassava brown streak disease (CBSD), are just a few of the plant viruses that have been prevalent in Africa in the recent past. A plant infected by CMD will display pale white or yellow leaves, leaf distortion, and stunted growth.

However, the symptoms for a CBSD-infected plant are less obvious as only small yellow patches on leaves indicate the presence of the disease. Most farmers are only able to identify the disease once they have harvested the plant as CBSD distorts the root and causes it to rot.

First identified in Uganda’s Mukono District in 2004, CBSD has since spread throughout the Great Lakes region of East Africa, resulting in a 30 to 70 percent loss in cassava harvests. The crop is a major staple food in Uganda, with annual production estimated at 5.5 million tonnes.

According to IITA, CBSD threatens the food security and livelihoods of over 200 million people in East and Central Africa. Combined, CMD and CBSD have caused more than one billion dollars worth of damage to cassava, with smallholder farmers being affected the most by the loss.

Chris Omongo, a cassava breeder at Uganda’s National Agricultural Crop Resources Research Institute, told IPS that some farming practices have aided the spread of the viruses.

“When you move infected materials from one location to another, you automatically help to spread the viruses,” said Omongo, adding that most farmers unwittingly share infected seed and seedlings.

Bulasio Luyiga, a smallholder cassava farmer in Central Uganda’s Mukono District, is one of them.

“The crop looked so healthy, but at harvest, each tuber was rotten,” he told IPS. The CBSD generally attacks the root of the cassava, though the leaves of the plants can also be affected.

Luyiga said he lost more than 70 percent of the crop to the virus. “It was a total loss because I bought what was considered clean, planting material, only to discover that they were susceptible to this disease. I wouldn’t have planted them had I known this early,” said Luyiga.

Omongo said that if given the knowledge, smallholder farmers can prevent plant virus diseases from spreading. “Once farmers know how to identify the diseases, then they will avoid it. They are also too poor to afford the improved varieties of plants resistant to disease. The point is to create awareness and we shall prevent the spread,” he said.

Another factor that needs to be addressed in combating the spread of plant diseases is one of resources. Luyiga and farmers like him rarely have access to agricultural advisory and extension services that could provide them with the knowledge on how to identify and deal with the plant viruses. Such services are limited in most East African countries and when available tend to be poor in quality.

In Uganda, one extension worker is required to offer services to over 1,000 farmers in a sub-county, which, Omongo said, limited early detection and prevention of the spread of the diseased plants.

Professor William Otim-Nape, a Ugandan Plant Pathologist and member of the Africa Innovation Institute, told IPS that viral diseases continue to cause major economic losses in Africa. “Such losses remain grossly underestimated and they are often ignored or overlooked,” he said.

Victor Manyong, an economist at IITA, estimates CBSD causes 175 million dollars in losses in East Africa each year.

Otim-Nape added that the number of trained plant virologists in Africa was far too low to provide an adequate response to deal with the many plant viruses.

“A critical mass of trained plant virologists is required to identify and prioritise virus disease problems and to create awareness in the public and among policymakers,” he said.

Sanginga agreed. “There is an urgent need to confront viral diseases affecting staple crops like cassava, banana and maize using advances in science. We need science to solve these problems,” he said.

“We have to do more for the farmers I met in Mukono, Uganda, who lost their entire cassava crop due to CBSD and CMD,” Sanginga urged, adding that Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, too, will need assistance to deal with the threat of Maize Lethal Necrosis Disease.

East Africa experienced a CMD outbreak in the 1990s and smallholder farmers watched as it devastated their cassava gardens, forcing thousands to abandon the crop. The disease spread to several African countries including, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Gabon until researchers bred a cassava variety resistant to the disease. The release of a new variety restored cultivation of the crop.

But current low budgetary allocations for agricultural research in most East African countries has limited the investment in plant viral diseases research, according to Mercy Karanja, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation regional advisor to East Africa.

“We have big problems in agriculture. So we need to invest money to do research. And even when products of research are out, you need money to ensure that they reach farmers,” she told IPS.