HarvestPlus

Micronutrient deficiency is a widespread health problem in the developing world. Most efforts to combat this issue have focused on providing vitamin and mineral supplements to vulnerable population groups and/or fortifying foods through ...

Biofortified staple crops - food crops bred for higher micronutrient content - are expected to reduce micronutrient deficiency and its accompanying adverse health outcomes. Health benefits can be measured and expressed in terms of the number of ...

Vitamin A deficiency is a major health problem in Africa and in many other developing countries. Biofortified staple crops that are high in beta-carotene and adapted to local growing environments have the potential to significantly reduce the ...

The First Global Conference on Biofortification, held November 9-11, 2010 in Washington, DC, drew attention to the substantial progress made in (i) breeding high-yielding, high-nutrient crops and (ii) establishing the bioavailability and ...

More than 840 million people do not get enough food to meet their daily energy needs. However, far more—an estimated 3 billion people—suffer the insidious effects of micronutrient deficiencies because they lack access to more nutritious foods ...

This study analyzes consumer acceptance of biofortified orange maize in rural Zambia by eliciting consumers’ willingness to pay. It attempts to examine the impact of nutrition information, comparing the use of simulated radio versus community ...

The biofortification strategy aims to reduce the prevalence of vitamin and mineral nutritional deficiencies that are widespread in low-income populations by developing nutrient-rich varieties of staple food crops that the poor consume habitually. ...

Ekin joined HarvestPlus in 2010 as the Impact and Policy Coordinator. She first joined IFPRI in 2007 as a Research Fellow with the Markets, Trade and Institutions Division. From 2004 to 2007 she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the ...

Fabiana Moura is a Nutritionist Research Fellow at HarvestPlus responsible for managing the nutrition research component of 4 biofortified crops: banana, cassava, sorghum, and rice under the auspices of the Grand Challenges in Global Health, a ...

Carotenoid analysis is inherently difficult and error prone. Despite substantial improvements and refinements in the methods for analyzing these fascinating but complicated compounds, discrepancies in analytical data can still be perceived in the ...

A new strategy promises to reduce hidden hunger and improve peoples lives throughout the developing world. Watch this short film to find out why biofortification offers hope for a healthier harvest. For more information, visit the HarvestPlus ...

Biofortification is increasingly seen as an additional tool to combat micronutrient malnutrition. This paper presents, for the first time, evidence on the costs and potential benefits of biofortification for a large number of countries in Africa, ...

This review is organized as follows. First, the characteristics of the digestion and absorption and the metabolism of vitamin A and carotenoids are briefly discussed in Sections 2 and 3, respectively. The numerous factors that affect carotenoid ...

In this paper, we examine the implications of alternative country-specific scenarios for biofortification on the reduction of micronutrient deficiency prevalence in under-fives. The scenarios are implemented within a long-term projections model ...

Jose Funes is originally from Honduras. Before joining HarvestPlus, he worked with the Development Strategy and Governance division at IFPRI as GIS research analyst. He received his undergraduate degree in Agricultural Engineering from Zamorano ...