Nutritionally Enhanced Staple Food Crops
Crop biofortification is a sustainable and cost-effective strategy to address
malnutrition in developing countries. This review synthesizes the progress
toward developing seed micronutrient-dense cereals and legumes cultivars by
exploiting natural genetic variation using conventional breeding and/or transgenic
technology, and discusses the associated issues to strengthen crop biofortification
research and development. Some major QTL for seed iron and zinc,
seed phosphorus, and seed phytate in common bean, rice,J;md wheat have been
mapped. An iron reductase QTL associated with seed-iron ~QTL is found in common bean where the genes coding for candidate enzymes involved in phytic
acid synthesis have also been mapped. Candidate genes for Ipa co segregate with
mutant phenotypes identified in rice and soybean. The Gpe-B1 locus in wild
emmer wheat accelerates senescence and increases nutrient remobilization
from leaves to developing seeds, and another gene named TtNAM-B1 affecting
these traits has been cloned. Seed iron-dense common bean and rice in Latin
America; seed iron-dense common bean in eastern and southern Africa;.....