Abstract
Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD) has been a public health problem among children in developing countries. To alleviate VAD, Vitamin A Supplementation (VAS), food fortification, biofortification and nutrition education have been implemented in various degrees of success with their own merits and limits. While VAS is the most widely utilized intervention in developing countries to ease the burden of VAD, some have raised questions on VAS’ effectiveness. Biofortification, often touted as an effective alternative to VAS, has received significant attention. Among the available biofortification methods, adopting transgenic technology has not only facilitated rapid progress in science for enhanced pro-Vitamin A (pVA) levels in target crops, but drawn considerable skepticism in politics for safety issues. Additionally, VAD-afflicted target regions of transgenic pVA crops widely vary in their national stance on Genetically Modified (GM) products, which further complicates crop development and release. This paper briefly reviews VAS and its controversy which partly demanded shifts to food-based VAD interventions, and updates the current status of transgenic pVA crops. Also, this paper presents a framework to provide potential influencers for transgenic pVA crop development under politically challenging climates with GM products. The framework could be applicable to other transgenic micronutrient biofortification.
Highlights
The 2016 World Food Prize (WFP), the prestigious prize for agricultural research, celebrated four recipients on their achievement with the pro-vitamin A biofortified sweet potato to combat Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD) [1]
Vitamin A deficiency, increases vulnerability to a range of illnesses including diarrhea, measles, and respiratory infections [4] leading to higher mortality [5]
200,000 International Units (IU) VA capsules were distributed to preschool-aged children twice a year in 450 Indonesian villages, and the authors found Vitamin A Supplementation (VAS) could decrease child mortality by 34%, compared to the control [26]
Summary
The 2016 World Food Prize (WFP), the prestigious prize for agricultural research, celebrated four recipients on their achievement with the pro-vitamin A (pVA) biofortified sweet potato to combat Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD) [1]. Vitamin A deficiency is a major public health issue especially among preschool-aged children in developing countries. It affects about 190 million of those children, and estimated 6.9 million die annually due to VAD by the age of five [2]. Other interventions to alleviate VAD are more food-based, including promotion of dietary diversification, food fortification, and biofortification. Biofortification can be achieved by applying nutrient-rich fertilizers to facilitate micronutrient accumulation in edible parts, conventional breeding by creating elite hybrids with enhanced target nutrients, and transgenic methods to obtain specific nutritional traits from donor organisms [2]. The third part discusses political climates for adopting transgenic pVA crops, and presents a framework for transgenic pVA crop development
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