Is the sweet potato the solution to world hunger? Each year, the World Food Prize Foundation honors experts who are committed to increasing the quantity, quality and availability of food around the world.
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himThe sweet potato enriched with Vitamin A is the solution to world hunger? Each year, the World Food Prize Foundation honors experts who are committed to increasing the quantity, quality and availability of food around the world.
This year the group of winners includes a team from the International Potato Center. Four researchers have worked to make sweet potatoes more nutritious. A novelty that could improve nutritional intake through the nutrition of over 10 million people in Latin America, Asia and Africa.
The foundation that organized the awards described the four winners - Maria Andrade, Robert Mwanga, Jan Low and Howarth Bouis - as pioneers of biofortification. The central idea is to enrich some basic crops for the populations of developing countries with vitamins and micronutrients to improve their diet. Sweet potatoes are an example of this (this sweet potato has undergone genetic improvement, more information on bio-fortification here).
Read also: SWEET POTATO IS GENETICALLY MODIFIED BY NATURE: THE STRANGE CASE OF A "NATURAL GMO"
The International Potato Center has been doing research on sweet potatoes since 1988. Researchers have begun to grow a variety of Orange pulp sweet potato fortified with vitamin A and now they would like to introduce it as a crop or as a vegetable to feed on in the lives of 22 million African families. Already 10 African countries have bought and planted sweet potatoes fortified with vitamin A.
La vitamin A deficiency it can lead to premature death and blindness. Apparently sweet potatoes enriched with vitamin A can counteract these phenomena. According to experts, the impact of this novelty will have positive consequences all over the world and in particular in sub-Saharan Africa, where sweet potato crops will be able to develop without problems adapting to the climate. Experts who participated in the project included two African scientists working to tackle malnutrition in Africa.
Now it remains to be seen whether the consumption of sweet potatoes enriched with vitamin A it can be really beneficial for the populations of developing countries and if it can really counteract the lack of this vitamin in the diet.
We recently told you about Golden Rice as a genetically modified rice enriched with pro-vitamin A (beta-carotene) to alleviate the problem of nutritional deficiencies of populations living in developing countries where rice is the main food.
Read also: 108 NOBEL AWARDS IN FAVOR OF GMOs: IS TRANS RICE REALLY THE SOLUTION TO HUNGER IN THE WORLD? (VIDEO)
Research on GMO Golden Rice is problematic and its spread has never caught on. The same fate as the sweet potato?
Marta Albè
Photo source: World Food Prize
