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For about a decade, a project called HarvestPlus has been promoting an idea for fighting malnutrition in the third world: develop crops with higher levels of vitamins and minerals. Now HarvestPlus will get a chance to put its plan into action. It received a $25 million grant last week from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation giving it the money to jump-start its effort.
The approach represents "a new paradigm of agriculture as an instrument for public health," said Joachim Voss, director general of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia, an organization involved in the HarvestPlus program. The first goal will be to increase levels of iron, zinc and vitamin A in third world staple crops like rice, wheat, cassava and beans.
The United Nations estimates that nearly one person in three in the world suffers from deficiencies in so-called micronutrients like iron and zinc, contributing to developmental problems in children, disease and death. Iron deficiency is responsible for 100,000 maternal deaths in childbirth each year. Vitamin A deficiency causes hundreds of thousands of children to go blind annually, and lack of zinc makes people more susceptible to infectious diseases.
Efforts have been made to provide nutrients by distributing vitamin pills or by fortifying food in processing, by adding iodine to salt, for example. But these efforts tend to reach people mainly in urban areas.
Putting the nutrition in crops themselves, an approach called biofortification, is "a way to reach the rural populations," said David Fleming, director of global health strategies at the Gates Foundation.
Howarth Bouis, an agricultural economist who directs HarvestPlus, said biofortification could be cheaper than vitamin supplements because once seeds were developed, they would cost farmers no more than their regular seed.
He said the program would mostly rely on conventional plant breeding rather than on genetic engineering because it would cost as much as $10 million to get each genetically engineered crop approved in each country. Still, he said, HarvestPlus will do research in genetic engineering because the technology may be used to create some crops that cannot be developed by breeding.
An example, he said, is golden rice, a genetically engineered crop with higher than normal levels of beta carotene, which the body converts to vitamin A. The crop, still years from being ready for use, has been the center of controversy, with companies pointing to it as an example of the potential of biotechnology and biotech critics portraying it as more of a public relations tool than an effective remedy for malnutrition.
The foundation's grant will allow HarvestPlus, which has been subsisting on a shoestring budget for nearly a decade, finally to get off the ground.
Historically, Dr. Bouis said, organizations that give money for health are not interested in agriculture and those that finance agricultural research are interested in improving yields, not nutrition. Some scientists said crops bred to have higher nutrient levels would have lower yields, making them unattractive to farmers.
"It's been a very hard sell," Dr. Bouis said.
The World Bank is contributing $12 million to the effort and the United States Agency for International Development has given $2 million. HarvestPlus is run by two agricultural research centers that are under the auspices of the World Bank: the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington and the tropical agricultural center in Colombia.
Dr. Bouis said it could take 8 to 10 years for the effort to have a major effect on public health, though some crops might be ready sooner. Indeed, he said, a yellow sweet potato that can provide vitamin A was found in a seed bank and is already being introduced to Africa, where people normally eat white sweet potatoes lacking in the nutrient.
HarvestPlus will strike alliances with seed and biotech companies, in part to help distribute the seeds, Dr. Bouis and other officials said at a news conference last week.
Brian Halweil of the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental research group, said that biofortification was a good short-term solution but that the ultimate answer was a more diverse diet. "These people are nutritionally deficient because they eat only three bowls of rice a day and nothing else," he said.
Gates Foundation Announces $25 Million Grantto Support Innovative Nutrition Program for Poor Countries - PRESS RELEASE
HarvestPlus program will fight malnutrition—a leading cause of child deaths—with new agricultural technology
SEATTLE – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced a $25 million grant to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to combat malnutrition, a leading cause of child deaths in the developing world, by improving the nutritional quality of staple foods in developing countries.
The grant will support HarvestPlus, a global research initiative to breed and disseminate crops for better nutrition, which is being spearheaded by the International Center for Tropical Agricultural Research (CIAT) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Using an innovative approach called biofortification, agricultural and nutrition scientists will work together to breed crops that provide higher levels of micronutrients such as iron, zinc, and vitamin A.
“Vitamin and mineral deficiencies, which contribute to the deaths of millions of children each year, can be easily prevented by adding just a few key nutrients to staple foods,” said David Fleming, Director of Global Health Strategies at the Gates Foundation. “HarvestPlus, working with partners around the globe, has the potential to dramatically improve the lives of poor children and their families who depend largely upon these staples for their diets.”
Malnutrition contributes to over half of child deaths in the developing world, and the UN estimates that nearly one-third of the world’s population suffers from deficiencies in micronutrients such as iron, zinc, and vitamin A. Even mild levels of micronutrient malnutrition can damage cognitive and physical development, lower disease resistance in children, and reduce the likelihood that mothers survive childbirth. Iron deficiency alone affects over 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.
“Those most affected by malnutrition, the rural poor, are also the most difficult to reach with traditional nutrition programs,” said Howarth Bouis, Director of HarvestPlus. “Biofortified crops have the potential to transform the health of these communities by allowing them to grow crops that are naturally fortified with essential micronutrients.”
The first crops to be developed by the HarvestPlus initiative include those most widely consumed in the developing world, such as rice, wheat, maize, beans, cassava, and sweet potato.
“HarvestPlus provides a remarkable opportunity to harness twenty-first century agricultural science to dramatically improve children’s health over the long term,” noted Joachim Voss, Director of CIAT, which is leading crop breeding research for HarvestPlus. “This grant will enable biofortification researchers to accelerate their work adding nutrition into existing high-yielding varieties that meet the needs of poor farmers.”
Biofortification represents an important new avenue for agricultural research. Traditionally, crop breeding has often centered on increasing yields or enhancing environmental sustainability.
“Adding healthier food to the agricultural research agenda is an idea whose time has come,” said Joachim von Braun, Director General of IFPRI, which is directing nutrition and policy research for HarvestPlus. “Together with conventional strategies for improving nutrition, such as fortification, supplementation, and diversification of food in diets, this approach holds enormous potential. It will require a strong partnerships among agriculture and nutrition specialists.”
With the funding announced today, HarvestPlus will be able to substantially accelerate the development of crop varieties under its alliance of international and national agricultural research institutes, university nutrition and food crop programs, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations in the developing and developed world. The grant from the Gates Foundation provides one-half of the total $50 million that will be needed for HarvestPlus over an initial four-year period. It is hoped that grants from the World Bank, USAID and Denmark will account for approximately 40 percent of the required funding, and the remaining 10 percent is currently being sought from a number of potential donors.
“The Gates Foundation's support for HarvestPlus is welcome recognition of the value of innovative approaches to solving global problems," said Ian Johnson, Vice President of Sustainable Development at the World Bank and Chairman of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) that supports CIAT, IFPRI and other agricultural research partners. "The research program links the agriculture and public health sectors and creates a public-private partnership for tackling nutrient malnutrition. It is the latest example of groundbreaking initiatives adopted by the agricultural research centers of the CGIAR and their partners."
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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is building upon the unprecedented opportunities of the 21st century to improve equity in global health and learning. Led by Bill Gates' father, William H. Gates, Sr., and Patty Stonesifer, the Seattle-based foundation has an endowment of approximately $25 billion.
On the Internet: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, www.gatesfoundation.org HarvestPlus, www.harvestplus.org
source: http://www.harvestplus.org/noteworthy_2.html 21oct03
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 chair 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. Michigan State, with our strengths in the plant sciences and in international agriculture, and with visionary scientists like Dean DellaPenna, is 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.
source: http://www.msutoday.msu.edu/research/index.php3?article=17Oct2003-7 21oct03
Iowa State to Develop High Beta-Carotene Corn to Reduce Malnutrition in Africa PRESS RELEASE / Iowa State University 14oct03
AMES, Iowa -- Iowa State University researchers are part of HarvestPlus, a global research initiative to breed and disseminate crops that can fight malnutrition in developing nations.
The Iowa State research addresses vitamin A deficiency, which is one of the most serious causes of malnutrition in developing countries and can cause blindness, poor immune function and even premature death.
The research at Iowa State is part of a larger program, HarvestPlus, an interdisciplinary alliance of international and national agricultural research institutes, university nutrition and food crop programs, the private sector and nongovernmental organizations in the developing and developed world. The alliance was formed to breed crops biofortified with increased vitamin and mineral content to reduce malnutrition. HarvestPlus was organized through the International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, D.C., and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Cali, Colombia.
"Iowa State was selected as a partner because we're internationally recognized in all areas of this project," said Stephen Howell, director of the Plant Sciences Institute at Iowa State. "We have a history of leadership in carotene and vitamin A research, maize genetics and maize breeding."
"Iowa State has a long and distinguished history of partnering on agricultural research that benefits developing nations," said David Acker, assistant dean for national and global programs in the College of Agriculture. "The scope and potential impact of this project provides a truly remarkable opportunity to continue that tradition."
Within the HarvestPlus initiative, a $1.6 million, three-year grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development funds the project involving Iowa State, "High Beta-Carotene Maize to Alleviate Vitamin A Deficiency in Sub-Saharan Africa." Other partners on this project are the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, Mexico; the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Nigeria; the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Monsanto Company, St. Louis, Mo., also is a partner.
Iowa State's portion of the research is conducted by Steve Rodermel, professor of genetics, development and cell biology; Wendy White, associate professor of human nutrition; and Kan Wang, associate professor of agronomy and director of the Center for Plant Transformation and Gene Expression.
They will help develop corn with enhanced beta-carotene, the substance that human bodies convert into vitamin A. The researchers also will conduct studies to determine how much beta-carotene is absorbed and converted into vitamin A to meet daily requirements.
Rodermel and his collaborators will generate corn with high beta-carotene content. White will use highly sensitive analytical tools to measure in humans the actual vitamin A value of the beta-carotene-enriched corn.
"The crucial question is how much the beta-carotene content needs to be increased in the corn kernel," White said. "To answer this question, we first have to understand how much of the beta-carotene is absorbed by the body and converted into vitamin A to meet daily requirements."
"It's the intention for the vitamin A maize technology to be made available freely. HarvestPlus partner organizations in Africa will introduce the technology in their countries," Howell said.
At Iowa State, the project is coordinated and supported by the Plant Sciences Institute and the College of Agriculture. The research is administered by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the College of Family and Consumer Sciences.
source: http://www.iastate.edu/~nscentral/releases/2003/oct/vitA.shtml 21oct03
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