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Globally, more than 2 billion people—one in three—experience vitamin and mineral deficiencies. This “hidden hunger” can lead to premature and preventable death, developmental delays, visual impairment, and lower work performance. More broadly, it can contribute to slower economic growth and intergenerational poverty. Hidden hunger is especially concerning in the Global South, with women, adolescent girls, and young children at greatest risk.

Healthy, diverse diets are the optimal way to address hidden hunger, but biofortification also holds tremendous potential. By breeding staple food crops to increase vitamin and mineral density, biofortification delivers measurable, sustainable improvements to the diets of rural households that grow and consume their own food.

Join IFPRI and its HarvestPlus program, in collaboration with HarvestPlus Solutions, for this seminar on biofortification. Since 2004, HarvestPlus and partners have reached more than 640 million people across 60 countries in the Global South through their efforts to breed, test, and release self-fortifying, high-yielding, and cost-effective crops. This seminar will examine global progress on reducing micronutrient deficiencies through biofortification, including a detailed look at biofortification in Nigeria, Pakistan, and other countries. Speakers will also discuss effective scaling of biofortified crops, with a focus on both the enabling environment and private sector engagement.

Setting the Scene: Scaling Biofortified Crops in Global South

• David Spielman, Director, Innovation Policy and Scaling (IPS), IFPRI
• Brenda Mareri, Regional Program Manager Africa, HarvestPlus Solutions

Public Policy Creating a Favorable Environment for Scale

• Javed Ahmad, Director, Wheat Research Institute, Faisalabad, Pakistan

Private Sector Engagement to Catalyze Impact

• Samson Afolabi, Director of Research and Production, Premier Seed Nigeria Ltd.
• Yusuf Dollah Fou’ad, Acting Country Manager, Nigeria, HarvestPlus Solutions

Summarizing the Key Takeaways

• Arun Baral, Chief Executive Officer, HarvestPlus

Moderator

• Brenda Mareri, Regional Program Manager Africa, HarvestPlus Solutions

Full program details to follow.