The Importance Of Biofortification

Along with the development of biotechnology, there are more and more researches related to biofortification. Biotechnologists have already discovered how to strengthen the features of crop plants to enhance their nutritional value. In the 21st century, the advancement of nutritional health is one of the considerable issues because of the constantly rising and aging world population (Blancquaert et al., 2014). The meaning of fortification is to increase some essential nutrients in a food deliberately, such as vitamins and minerals (including trace elements), in order to improve the nutritional quality of food provision and to supply public health benefits at a minimum of health risks. While biofortification refers to the process of improving

The aim is to make plant foods more nutritious while plants are growing up without adding nutrients. As a result, biofortification is a tremendous possibility for handling micronutrient deficiencies in the developing world (Global Farmer Network™, n.d.). Folate deficiency which is influencing billions of people in the world is a serious and underrated problem of micronutrient malnutrition. Policies are being adjusted to confront folate deficiency in many countries, mostly by using biofortification technology to fortify foods with folic acid (Blancquaert et al., 2014). There is another study that shows biofortification being a new option to rival the deficiencies of vitamin A, iron and zinc. Scientific evidence and predictive cost-benefit analyses demonstrate that biofortification is technically achievable without affecting agricultural productivity and vital in medical equipment for managing micronutrient deficiencies (Nestel et al., 2006). Thus it can be seen why biofortify food is

There are 47% of pre-school children, 30% of menstruating women and 42% of young, pregnant women are suffering from iron deficiency. Vegetarians and vegans also have a opportunity of iron deficiency. Iron, which is a fundamental mineral, is a main element of red blood cells. If people suffer iron deficiency, the most ordinary consequence is anemia. The symptoms of anemia are usually weakness, tiredness, impaired brain functionand weakened immune system (Bjarnadotti, 2015). Zinc deficiency was first been discovered in 1961, being obvious to be a significant malnutrition problem in recent. Infants, children, adolescents, pregnant, lactating women and elderly are the groups at high risk of zinc deficiency. For young children and teenagers, they need lots of zinc during growth. For pregnant and lactating women, they demand more nutrition to nurture new born baby. A healthy human generally absorbs zinc around 107 µmol/day to 232 µmol/day. Zinc is widespread in cells and the character of it in human body can be divided into three broad categories: namely catalytic, structural and regulatory functions. The people who lack of zinc will affect their organ systems such as epidermal, gastrointestinal, central nervous, immune, skeletal, and reproductive systems (Roohani et al., 2013). In 1920, vitamin A deficiency was generally known between destitute people around the world