BIOFORTIFICATION AND THE INVOLVED MODERN APPROACHES

Being responsible for severe social and health issues, micronutrient malnutrition gives rise to serious apprehension throughout the world. Nutrition is the key factor in any strategy designed to reduce the burden of diseases globally. More than 3 billion people around the world suffer from micronutrient deficiency due to the consumption of poor-quality food. The green revolution fulfilled the need for greater yield, but the quality of the developed crops suffered. Today, poor people predominantly are suffering from micronutrient malnutrition as they cannot afford dietary supplementation due to poverty. Brain development and other body mechanisms and functions are critically affected due to the consumption of Zn and Fe deficient diet. Hence, the production of biofortified food crops is the need of time to solve the problem of micronutrient deficiency on a sustainable basis. Biofortification of commonly used food crops will offer the simplest solution to complex nutritional disorders. So. experimentation and testing should be done at both national and international levels to improve food quality and quantity. This review discusses different biofortification strategies that are employed to counteract several nutrient deficiencies. The role of several international agencies in this direction has also been discussed. This may help researchers to have an overview of the approaches in which more advancement is required. We emphasize that more efforts to modify the existing genomes using molecular techniques can open new pathways in the field of biofortification.