Abstract
Pearl millet is an important food crop in the arid and semi-arid tropical regions of Africa and Asia. Iron and zinc deficiencies are widespread and serious public health problems worldwide, including in India and Africa. Biofortification is a cost-effective and sustainable agricultural strategy to address this problem. The aim of this review is to provide the current biofortification breeding status and future directions of the pearl millet for growing nutrition markets. Research on the pearl millet has shown that a large genetic variability (30–140 mg kg−1 Fe and 20–90 mg kg−1 Zn) available in this crop can be effectively utilized to develop high-yielding cultivars with high iron and zinc densities. Open-pollinated varieties (Dhanashakti) and hybrids (ICMH 1202, ICMH 1203 and ICMH 1301) of pearl millet with a high grain yield and high levels of iron (70–75 mg kg−1) and zinc (35–40 mg kg−1) densities have been developed and released first in India. Currently, India is growing > 70,000 ha of biofortified pearl millet, and furthermore more pipeline cultivars are under various stages of testing at the national (India) and international (west Africa) trials for a possible release. Until today, no special markets existed to promote biofortified varieties and hybrids as no incentive price to products existed to address food and nutritional insecurity simultaneously. The market demand is likely to increase only after an investment in crop breeding and the integration into the public distribution system, nutritional intervention schemes, private seed and food companies with strong mainstreaming nutritional policies. The following sections describe various aspects of breeding and market opportunity for addressing micronutrient malnutrition.
Highlights
The inadequate intake of energy-providing organic macronutrients, leads to under-nutrition, with a consequent feeling of hunger
The variability for grain minerals in this crop opens the opportunity for breeding high iron breeding lines and hybrid parents and thereby high-iron cultivars for improved human nutrition in millet consuming populations
Building collaborate with various actors in food and retail to demand the creation of iron pearl millet grains, product acceptance is further facilitated by the agronomic superiority of recently released high-iron cultivars
Summary
The inadequate intake of energy-providing organic macronutrients (largely carbohydrate, followed by protein and fat, in that order), leads to under-nutrition, with a consequent feeling of hunger. Micronutrient malnutrition, primarily the result of a poor quality of diets or a poor intake of vitamins and minerals, affects more than 2 billion people in developing countries, especially women and preschool children [2,3] The costs of these micronutrient deficiencies in terms of lives lost, the adverse effect on the economic growth and the poor quality of life are very huge and more staggering in developing countries, including India. While the development of OPVs (100%) continues to be the thrust research area in Africa, the development of hybrids (70%) is the primary focus in India [4] Pearl millet as such is a high-iron crop with a fairly high Zn content, higher than rice and wheat; not all available cultivars have a high Fe and Zn content. All these screening, breeding and market opportunities are briefly discussed
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