Preharvest Biofortification of Horticultural Crops

Micronutrient malnutrition or hidden hunger is an alarming public health issue in developing countries, affects more than half of the world’s population, and causes enormous loss in quality and quantity of mankind. Among the malnourished population, vitamin A, iron, zinc, iodine, and selenium deficiency are predominant. Modern plant breeding has been focused primarily toward achieving high agronomic yields rather than nutritional quality, and conventional efforts like supplementation, diet diversification, and industrial fortification cannot mitigate the situation. Biofortification is a practice of nutrient fortification in food plants involving modern breeding, transgenic approaches, improved agronomy, and microbiological interventions toward changing genetic architecture, improving micronutrient uptake, and proper distribution in edible tissues to safe levels, reduction in antinutrients in food staples for promoting bioavailability of nutrients thereby becoming a sustainable and long-term strategy to address negative impacts of vitamin and nutrient deficiencies. Considering the nutritional impact of horticultural crops, biofortification program have been carried out in potato, cassava, sweet potato, beans, cow pea, bananas through the joint effort of national and international organizations. Several conventional and transgenic varieties have been released and disseminated to the farming communities, and additional varieties are in the pipeline. However, the effectiveness of the biofortification program essentially relies on the farmers’ and consumers’ acceptance and future policy interventions. Therefore, strategic research and appropriate policy can lead to biofortification’s grand success in the near future.