'U' leads team
which seeks to
build better crops

By Sue Nichols

MSU will play a key role in a new initiative to improve the health of the poor in developing countries by working to create staple food crops that are enriched in micronutrients.

MSU is the coordinating institution of a team of three that comprise the Nutritional Genomics team of HarvestPlus, a global research initiative to breed and disseminate crops for better nutrition.

Using an innovative approach called biofortification, agricultural and nutrition scientists will work together to breed and engineer crops that provide higher levels of essential micronutrients such as iron, zinc and vitamin A.

The project seeks to bring the full potential of agricultural science, genetics, molecular biology and genomics to bear on the persistent problem of micronutrient malnutrition in the developing world, said Dean DellaPenna, an MSU professor of biochemistry and molecular biology.

“Micronutrient malnutrition affects more than half of the world’s population, especially women and children,” DellaPenna said. “The costs of these deficiencies in terms of lives lost, forgone economic growth and poor quality of life are staggering.”

Until now, plant science in agriculture has of necessity focused on increasing yield and resistance to pests and pathogens in order to feed the growing world population.

While this has been successful, it has given rise to another problem, DellaPenna said: an increasing reliance on a limited number of staple crops. As a result, diets across the world have less variety, such that even when caloric needs are met, many essential micronutrients are lacking.

The developed world addressed this issue in the early 1930s and ‘40s by fortifying abundantly consumed foods with the essential vitamins and minerals -- iodine in salt, and vitamins and minerals in cereal, milk and flour, for example.

Yet reaching the necessary populations in most developing countries with fortification is difficult or impossible. Creating staple crops with more and balanced micronutrients provides the opportunity for large proportions of the population in developing countries to have access to better nutrition on a daily basis, which translates to better health.

Malnutrition contributes to more than half of child deaths in the developing world, and the United Nations estimates that nearly one-third of the world’s population suffers from severe deficiencies in one or more micronutrients. Even less severe levels of micronutrient malnutrition can damage long-term cognitive and physical development, lower disease resistance in children and reduce the likelihood that mothers survive childbirth. Iron deficiency alone affects more than 3.5 billion people in the developing world and is responsible for 100,000 maternal deaths during childbirth each year. Vitamin A deficiency causes more than 500,000 children to go blind each year and is a leading cause of child mortality.

“You can eat all the rice you want, and you still won’t get your daily requirement of provitamin A (beta carotene); it’s produced in rice leaves but is not accumulated in rice seed,” DellaPenna said. “But one member of our Nutritional Genomics team, Peter Beyer, already has shown rice can be engineered to produce provitamin A in seed. Similar approaches using breeding and genetic engineering, when appropriate, can be employed in rice and other crops to positively affect the micronutrient quality of food in the diet of the world’s poor. The impact has the potential to truly change the daily lives of more than half the world’s population.”

MSU President Peter McPherson, who has a long history of service to international development and hunger issues, is serving as chairperson of the HarvestPlus Project Advisory Committee.

“The issues of international development, and of working to help feed people in developing nations, will not be solved by any one person or institution,” McPherson said. “HarvestPlus is an excellent approach, bringing some of the best minds in the country together. With our strengths in the plant sciences and in international agriculture, and with visionary scientists like Dean DellaPenna, we are in a position to advance knowledge and transform lives.”

The first crops targeted for development by the HarvestPlus initiative include those most widely consumed in the developing world, and include rice, wheat, maize, beans, cassava and sweet potato.

HarvestPlus is spearheaded by the International Center for Tropical Agricultural Research in Cali, Columbia, and the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C.

The structure of HarvestPlus mimics the way science is done in medicine, DellaPenna said. Several different disciplines join together to address the problem -- from nutritionists working in developing countries to identify specific nutritional needs to experts in genetics, molecular biology and biochemistry to unlock pathways and employ recent breakthroughs in genomics to help plant breeders to develop new crops.

The Nutritional Genomics Team -- which includes Beyer at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and Michael Grusak at the USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center in Houston -- will focus on the biochemical processes involved in the synthesis of vitamins and accumulation of minerals to determine how to biofortify edible plant parts with new or increased micronutrients.

Copyright 2001 Michigan State University Division of University Relations.