Breeding nutrients into food crops. Provides a sustainable solution for long-term delivery of micronutrients.

1. M.Venkatasami, I.D.No:2020641005
Ph.D. (Processing and Food Engineering)
Department of Food Process Engineering
AEC&RI, TNAU.
BIOFORTIFICATION
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2. INTRODUCTION
BIOFORTIFICATION
 The process of breeding nutrients into food crops
 Provides a comparatively cost effective, sustainable, and
long-term means of delivering more micronutrients.
Micronutrient-dense High yield
Biofortification
Fortification and
supplementation,
Plant breeding
Transgenic
techniques
Agronomic
practices
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3. MINERALS AND VITAMINS
Inorganic chemical elements Dissociated ions
Essential
minerals
Abundant
in food
16 11 Limited
amounts
5
 Iodine (I), Iron (Fe), Zinc (Zn), Calcium (Ca), Selenium (Se)
 Vitamin A, Vitamin B1 –B12, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin E ,
Vitamin K, Vitamin H
Limited Minerals
Vitamins
 Milled cereals » A low bioavailable mineral content
 Ca deficiency is widespread in the industrialized world
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4. TECHNOLOGY
 Enhancing the mineral nutritional qualities of crops at source
 Increase both mineral levels and their bioavailability
 Agronomic intervention, plant breeding, or genetic engineering,
Agronomic Approaches
Mineral fertilizer
Foliar fertilization
Plant growth
promoting microbes
Plant breeding and genetic
engineering
Changes in the genotype of a
target crop
 Creates plant lines carrying genes that favor the most efficient
accumulation of bioavailable minerals
R&D
Economically and
Environmentally
Sustainable
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5.  Crossing the best performing plants
 Selection based on favorable traits over many generations
 Limited to genes that can be sourced from sexually compatible plants
Plant
breeding
BREEDING APPROACHES
PLANT BREEDING
 The discovery of genetic variation affecting
heritable mineral traits
1
 Checking their stability under different conditions
2
 The feasibility of breeding for increasing mineral
content in
3
Molecular biology
techniques
Quantitative trait locus
(QTL)
Marker-assisted
selection (MAS)
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6. CONT…
CONVENTIONAL PLANT BREEDING
Genetic
variability
Available & observable
wild varieties
To obtain higher levels of nutrition
yield and sometimes grain quality are
traded away
 10 years to develop quality protein maize (QPM)
 Iron and zinc in rice and wheat lead to higher yields
 Orange-fleshed sweet potatoes (OFSP) promoted through the HarvestPlus program in Africa
OFSP
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7. CONT…
MUTATION BREEDING
 Used extensively in developed and developing countries
 To develop grain varieties with improved grain quality
 Genetic variability created by inducing mutations
Mutations
Chemical treatments
Irradiation
 The FAO/International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
Mutant varieties database 2500 varieties
•Asia
• Wheat, rice, maize,
and soybeans
1568
• Europe
• Flowers
695
• US
• Flowers
165
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8. CONT…
MOLECULAR BREEDING
 Marker-assisted breeding, relies on biological breeding processes
 Development of genomics- the study of the location and function of genes
 Fast detection of desired traits
 Reduces waiting time (plant maturity)
 Reduces the number of generations
Identification of the
location of a gene
Build a probe
DNA fragment
Marker
 QPM, disease resistance, and drought tolerance in maize
One variety of several different genes that code for different traits are possible
EXAMPLE
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9.  Accesses genes from any source
 Introduces genes directly into the crop
 No taxonomic constraints
 Artificial genes can be used
Genetic
Engineering
/ rDNA
GENETIC ENGINEERING
Carrier Nonviable virus - Agrobacterium
 GE produces plants are known as transgenics or less precisely
as GMOs
Precursor to
VA
Golden rice Daffodil plant
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10. TISSUE CULTURES
 Reproduce plants from a single cell.
 To produce disease-free planting material of clonally propagated crops such as bananas
 Important tool for propagation of roots and tubers, such as potatoes and cassava
Tissue
culture
Embryo
rescue
techniques
Nerica
rice
 Increase genetic variability of the cultivated crop
 Brings in valuable traits of the wild and weedy relatives
 Nerica rice : High yield variety and resistance to water stresses
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11. IODINE
 Salt is used for iodine fortification
 Potassium iodide (KI) and potassium iodate (KIO₃)
 Salt does not affect the sensory properties of food
 Bread, sugar, fish sauce, vegetable oil, milk, and water
Thyroid
hormones
Tetraiodothyronine (T4)
Triiodothyronine (T3)
Fish and other seafood Bioaccumulates Iodine
DRA 150 μg - Iodine concentration in salts 20–40 mg/kg
Food Iodine
Concentration
(mg/Kg)
Milk 242
Yogurt 266
Cottage cheese 490
Cheese 265
Poultry meat 130
Beef meat 113
Fish 315
Eggs 50-100
Bread 22-584
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12. IRON
 Ferrous sulfate
 Ferrous fumarate
 Ferrous bisglycinate
 NaFeEDTA
 Bread prepared from white wheat flour
 Meal based on corn tortillas
 Wholemaize porridge, milk formulas, water
Examples of
fortified food
products
2 x ferrous fumarate or
3 x ferrous sulfate
Ferrous bisglycinate and
NaFeEDTA
Iron inhibitors
Phytate and
polyphenols
Iron
concentrations
in
plant
foods
Plant food Fe (μg/g)
Rice, brown 15
Rice, polished 2
Wheat, wholemeal 30
Wheat flour, white 7
Maize, whole 30
Pearl millet 47
Peas, dried 50
Cassava root 5
Sweet potato 6
Cabbage, broccoli 17
Tomato 5
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13. ZINC
 Essential functional component of thousands of proteins.
 100 enzymes require Zn as a cofactor.
 Some olfactory receptors cannot function without Zn.
 Many cells in the body secrete Zn as a signaling molecule,
 Infant milk formula, bread, porridge, and cereals (wheat
flour, maize flour, or rice).
Zinc fortified foods
 Zinc citrate·3H₂O [31% of Zn]
 Zinc sulfate·7H₂O [23%]
 Zinc gluconate·xH₂O [13%]
 Insoluble zinc oxide [80%]
Soluble zinc salts
for food
fortification
The most
commonly
used are
zinc oxide and
zinc sulfate
Rice Zn
HvNAS1 gene from
Barley-35 μg/g
Soybean ferritin,
Aspergillus flavus
phytase, OsNAS1
35 mg/g
Overexpression of
OsNAS2- 76 μg/g
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14. CALCIUM
 It plays an important structural role.
 An enzyme cofactor
 An important signaling molecule.
 Most abundant mineral in the human body,
 Accounting for 1–2 % of an adult’s body mass
 Over 99 % of ca is stored in the teeth and bones
 It plays a pivotal role in the blood clotting cascade
Soy milk
Raw: <10 mg Ca/serving
Ca-fortified: 80 to 500
mg/serving
Ca absorbed at
only 75%
efficiency
Crop Target Calcium
content
Potato Overexpr
essed
AtsCAX1
300%
increase
in Ca
Lettuce Overexpr
essed
AtsCAX1
25~32%
increase
in Ca
Carrot Overexpr
essed
AtsCAX1
160%
increase
in Ca
Tomato Overexpr
essed
AtsCAX1
100%
increase
in Ca
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15. SELENIUM
 Se is an antioxidant
 The principal functional components of selenoenzymes
 It is an essential cofactor in approximately 50 enzymes
 Health benefits includes the prevention of cancer and heart disease
Two unusual
amino acids
Selenocysteine
Selenomethionine
Sodium selenite
(Na₂SeO₃)
Foliar application - potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, radish,
strawberry, sunflower, oat
Food group Se content
(mg/kg)
Cereal food 0.01-30
Meat 0.2-4.5
Fish/ sea
food
0.1-5
Eggs 0.34-0.58
Milk/ milk
products
0.01-0.03
Fruits and veg <0.5
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16. VITAMIN A
 An essential lipid-soluble nutrient
 Vitamin A activity - International Units (lU)
 6 μg of β-carotene has the activity of 1 μg of retinol
 1 β-carotene yields 2 retinal in human body
 RDI of Vit A for adult men and women are 1,000 and 800 μg
• Retinol
• Retinal
• Retinoic
acid
Retinoid
• α-carotene
• β-carotene
• γ-carotene
Carotenes Crop Gene used Total
increase
in level
Rice Phytoene
synthase (PSY)
from maize
37 μg/g
DW
Wheat maize psy1 gene
encoding
phytoene
synthase
4.96 μg/g
DW
Maize psy1 (maize) 59.32
μg/g DW
Cassava Bacterial crtB 6.67 μg/g
DW
Canola crtB and crtI 857 μg/g
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17. WHO PROJECTS
Examples of biofortification projects include:
Rice
Beans
Sweet potato
Cassava
Legumes
Wheat
Rice
Beans
Sweet potato
Maize
Sweet potato
Maize
Cassava
Sourghum
Cassava
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18. FUTURE CHALLENGES
Tissue capacity - storage
Heavy metals
Prebiotics and iron
absorption
Large-scale prospective
studies
Minerals mobilization
efficiency
Reducing anti-nutritional
factors
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19. REFERENCE
 Bellia, Claudio, Giuseppe Timpanaro, Alessandro Scuderi, and Vera Teresa Foti. "Assessment of
Several Approaches to Biofortified Products: A Literature Review." Applied System Innovation 4, no.
2 (2021): 30.
 Bouis, Howarth E, and Amy Saltzman. "Improving Nutrition through Biofortification: A Review of
Evidence from Harvestplus, 2003 through 2016." Global food security 12 (2017): 49-58.
 Kumar, Sushil, Adinath Palve, Chitra Joshi, and Rakesh K Srivastava. "Crop Biofortification for Iron
(Fe), Zinc (Zn) and Vitamin a with Transgenic Approaches." Heliyon 5, no. 6 (2019): e01914.
 Saeid, Agnieszka. Food Biofortification Technologies. CRC Press, 2017.
 Singh, Ummed, CS Praharaj, Sati Shankar Singh, and Narendra Pratap Singh. Biofortification of Food
Crops. Springer, 2016.
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20. THANK YOU
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