The growing world population needs a secure supply of food. Biofortifying staple foods is one way to solve challenges in the food industry. A paper recently published in Biology has considered the use of nanotechnology to fortify wheat, a key global crop.

What is Biofortification? 

Biofortification is the process of deliberately increasing the nutritional value of a food by agronomic methods, breeding, and biotechnology. It differs from conventional fortification in that it aims to increase the nutritional value of a plant during its growth rather than manually adding vitamins, minerals, and trace elements during processing.

Biofortification has important implications for reaching populations that have no or limited access to traditional supplements and fortification methods. It provides public health benefits with minimal risk to the health of populations and individuals.

Biofortifying Wheat: Current Perspectives 

Wheat is consumed by a sizable proportion of the world’s population. Increasing its nutritional value will tackle issues with malnutrition in growing populations. In recent decades, several biofortification strategies have been attempted with varying degrees of success. Conventional breeding, agronomic biofortification, and transgenic approaches have all been employed to provide nutritional benefits.

Whilst these approaches have had their successes, there have also been major drawbacks to them. There are regulatory barriers to the field, even though the biofortification methods themselves are well-developed. Genetic biofortification is limited by restrictions in the available targeted biological gene pool as well as being time-consuming. Agronomic biofortification suffers from problems with available fertilizers. Conventional plant breeding takes time.

Nanobiofortification

Nanobiofortification has gained traction in recent years as a viable alternative to contemporary genetic and agronomic methods. Using nanotechnology can circumvent time issues, resource requirements, and environmental risks.

One main benefit is the targeted delivery of fertilizer in the required amount, increasing nutrient uptake and preventing the leaching of potentially harmful inorganic fertilizer into fragile ecosystems. Nanomaterials used for this purpose vary in efficiency due to size, composition, chemical features, and the plant they are targeted for.

Source: AgroPages