A major global success in nutrition in recent decades started with a simple idea from young CGIAR researchers back in the 1990s: What if we could breed vitamins and minerals into the staple crops that people consume daily?
The idea was biofortification, and the lead researcher was Dr. Howarth Bouis – now a co-laureate of the World Food Prize. Dr Bouis was one of the CGIAR scientists who had the revolutionary idea that dietary quality was just as important as quantity. They proposed that staple crops could be ‘biofortified’ with micronutrients to address the ‘hidden hunger’ of deficiencies in iron, zinc and vitamin A, which can lead to blindness, disease or even death, particularly for children under the age of five.
The idea has since had global impact. There are now 290 new varieties of 12 biofortified crops – from rice to wheat, maize, bananas, potatoes and more – being grown in 60 countries, reaching an estimated 10 million farming households. Dr. Bouis, together with colleagues Drs Maria Andrade, Jan Low and Robert Mwanga from the International Potato Center (CIP), were awarded a World Food Prize in 2016 for their collaborative work on vitamin A-rich orange-fleshed sweet potato, considered to be the most successful example of biofortification work to date.
But all of this hasn’t happened overnight. Decades of research, partnership, planning and coordinated investment helped turn this ‘what if’ moment into the success story that biofortification has become today. Read more