Biofortification: Providing lifeline to Nigeria’s malnutrition

At the outskirts of Lokjogoma town in Wushishi Local Government area of Niger state is a small plot of maize farm belonging to Salamatu Haruna, a 33 years old widow and a mother of four.

 Challenged by the harsh economic situation in the country and the sudden death of her husband, Salamatu who had no education or skills could barely feed her family.

Salamtu was forced to depend on the only small piece of land her late husband left behind as inheritance for survival.

As a result, she constantly grows maize on the little piece of land to feed her children whose age ranges between two and seven years.

“I feed my children with maize in different forms, since it is the only food I have and can afford. I ferment and grind the maize to make mosa for them; I feed them with boiled fresh maize and also prepare tuwo masara from the maize I blend into flour,” Salamatu says.

Maize which is high in carbohydrate and also rich in phosphorus, magnesium do not contain the entire nutritional value for healthy living and growth, it needs to be added to other foods for a balanced diet.

Salamatu, like most Nigerians who feed daily on what they can find to satisfy their hunger needs, has been driven by poverty to consume a single staple crop-which cannot provide the essential vitamins and minerals for a healthy living especially for her children’s development.

“We feed on this daily. But my children are very thin and fall sick too often. The doctor told me to change their diet, but I cannot afford any other meal for them apart from maize,” she says with tears flowing down her cheeks.

Most Nigerian families can hardly afford foods with high nutritional value, forcing them to feed mostly on starchy foods which are very high in carbohydrates and are often cheaper.

Owing to this, there is rise in the number of malnourished persons in the country, with available statistics indicating that over 90 percent of Nigerians undergo diverse forms of malnutrition.

This is coupled with the high rate of poverty which is not in any way showing signs of decreasing due to harsh economic situation, high unemployment rate and insurgency in the northern region of the country.

According to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) about 2.5 million children under the age of five are malnourished and have stunted growth in Nigeria.

To change the narrative of the burden of malnutrition globally, especially in children, scientists have pioneered a simple but transformative technique to increase the nutritional value of staple food crops, such as sweet potatoes, beans, maize, and cassava amongst others in Africa.

These improved varieties of crops provide higher amounts of vitamin A, iron, and zinc—the three micronutrients identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as most lacking in diets globally.

Recent studies have shown that crops pioneered by scientists have dramatically improve vitamin A status, reduce diarrhoea disease, improve visual function, and reverse iron deficiency in women and children.

Malnutrition is easy to tackle with bio-fortification of crops already taking place across the world.

Currently,  minerals or inorganic compound are added to fertilizer by traditional plant breeding or biotechnology methods, though the application of fertilizers bio-fortified with micronutrients is the most simple of these methods, according to Kathleen L. Hefferon of the University of Toronto, Canada.

Also, a new variety of biotech rice, which has the capacity to reduce the impact of vitamin A deficiency responsible for 500,000 cases of irreversible blindness and up to two million deaths each year, exists in many parts of the world and can help in Nigeria.

With Biofortified maize, Salamatu’s children can get the daily nutritional requirement for their growth and development despite consuming a single staple food.

Biotechnology has enabled countries such as China, India and the United States to develop healthier foods for their people.

“With increasing vulnerability to hidden hunger, a condition where people do not get enough essential vitamins and minerals in their daily diets, cases of disabilities associated with micronutrient deficiencies, that is, poor immune system, low IQ, diarrhea, night blindness, anemia among others, will continue to grow if not checked,” Paul Ilona, country manager, HarvestPlus, says.

“In Nigeria where about 50 percent of the population lives in the rural areas, micronutrient malnutrition will lead to increased pressure on national health budgets and a weak labour force which can be addressed with the adoption of biofortified crops,” Ilona says.

Nigeria, a mono-cultural economy, relies on oil for 90 percent foreign exchange and 75 percent revenue.

However, efforts are now geared towards revenue and economic diversification with agriculture taking the centre stage.

For this to happen, AfricanFarmer Mogaji, CEO, X-Ray Farms and Consulting Limited, says that bio-fortified seeds must be at the forefront to improve yields per hectare and reduce the number of children suffering from the devastating effects of malnutrition, through the fortification of their basic diets with essential micronutrients.

 Science of biofortification

Biofortification is a feasible and cost-effective means of delivering micronutrients to populations that may have limited access to diverse diets and other micronutrient interventions.

It is a process by which crops are bred in a way that increases their nutritional value, a procedure experts say is much cheaper than adding micronutrients to already processed foods.

It has two key comparative advantages; its long-term cost-effectiveness and its ability to reach underserved, rural populations.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), a UN food agency, considers malnutrition—caused by a lack of essential micronutrients such as iodine, iron, zinc and vitamin A in diets—a threat to millions of African lives.

The long term consequences of insufficient amounts of essential micronutrients in human diets are devastating as it plays a crucial role in human development. Its deficiency can cause birth defects, permanent physical and mental impairment, as well as increased risk of death.

Owing to this, plant breeders through constant research and science of genetics were able to select certain desirable traits in a plant to create improved varieties.

HarvestPlus, a global biofortifier at the fore front of promoting bio-fortification, has screens thousands of different types of crop seeds stored in seed banks that have naturally higher amounts of iron, zinc, and vitamin A.

“Our nutritional genomicists use tools such as marker-assisted selection to help speed up the breeding process,” Howarth Bouis a former economist with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, D.C says.

“We use these more nutritious seeds to breed new crop varieties with higher micronutrient content that are also high yielding and have other traits farmers want,” Bouis said.

Increasing yields

Nigeria’s population is rising rapidly but food production is not moving in the same trajectory, sparking fears of food insecurity in Africa’s most populous country.

Nigeria is populated by 190 million people who must be fed with staple foods ranging from yams, rice, cassava to beans, bananas and tomatoes.

However, there is still much demand-supply gap in most of the staple foods, even as the population growth rate stands at 3.2 percent per annum.  The country’s population is projected to surpass the 300 million people mark by 2050, according to The World Population Prospects 2017.

Experts believe that Nigeria can alleviate some aspect of its food insecurity if bio-fortification is widely adopted across the country, as it helps improve farmers’ productivity.

 A  bio-fortified sorghum varieties introduced by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) 12KNICSV-188, Improve Deko has an average yields of 2.4-2.8 tons per hectare, compared to the less than 1ton per hectare from other non bio-fortified local varieties.

Farmers using bio-fortified crops varieties are harvesting more yields per hectare and earning more income selling the surplus.

 Josephine Okojie

The post Biofortification: Providing lifeline to Nigeria’s malnutrition appeared first on BusinessDay : News you can trust.