- What Goes Down Must Come Up: Global Food Prices Reach New Heights
- Commentary: Toward a New Global Governance System for Agriculture, Food, and Nutrition: What Are the Options?
- Prevention More Effective than Treatment
- Scientific Breakthrough Targets Vitamin A Deficiency in Africa
- Promoting Seed-Sector Reform in Mali
- Lessons to Be Learned from the Dragon and the Elephant
- Interview with R. K. Pachauri, Director General of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi, and Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
- Commentary: Reinvigorating Africa's Agricultural Sector
- Insert: 18th Annual Martin J. Forman Memorial Lecture
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IFPRI ForumIn a scientific breakthrough that will help combat vitamin A deficiency in Africa, researchers with HarvestPlus, which is co-led by IFPRI and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), have developed a much faster and cheaper way to identify maize lines that are naturally high in beta-carotene.
Vitamin A deficiency is widely prevalent in Africa, causing blindness, disease, and even death. Because maize is a staple crop on much of the continent, HarvestPlus scientists have been working to breed biofortified maize varieties with higher levels of beta-carotene, which is converted to vitamin A in the body. Until now, however, identifying desirable lines of maize to use for breeding has been difficult. Though many lines have naturally high levels of beta-carotene, and maize kernels with higher levels of total carotenoids are often darker yellow or orange in color, not all of them are high in beta-carotene. Therefore, scientists have not been able to rely on color alone to identify the desirable lines, and the chemical tests they have been using have been expensive and laborious.
In order to find a solution to this problem, a HarvestPlus team led by researchers at the United States Department of Agriculture/Cornell University, and the University of Illinois analyzed a genetically diverse panel of almost 300 lines of maize and was able to identify a gene and develop genetic markers that are associated with higher levels of beta-carotene in maize. According to Ed Buckler, one of the lead scientists involved in the project, this method for identifying maize breeding lines that are high in beta-carotene is much simpler, faster, and "up to 1,000-fold cheaper" than running the conventional chemical tests that were the only option.
Buckler and his colleagues are now working with several CGIAR centers in developing countries to help train plant breeders in the use of the new technique, which is being made freely available. It is expected that this technique should accelerate maize biofortification by making it easier to quickly identify the most promising lines for breeding.The first biofortifed varieties are slated for release as early as 2012.