Promotion of biofortified crops vital for combating malnutrition

Al Amin :
Random release and promotion of biofortified crops are vital for combating malnutrition, especially in the rural areas as one out of four people is leaving with various nutrition deficiencies, said experts.
For mothers and children, most vulnerable generation to malnutrition, the rice varieties rich with micronutrients such as zinc, iron and Vitamin-A would be great solution for them, they said.
The country’s crop scientists have developed a range of biofortified rice varieties enriched with the micronutrients which could help saving mothers from acute anemia and under-aged children from stunting as well as wasting, they added.
But regulatory sluggishness has been working as an obstacle to reach the benefits to millions of malnourished people, who hardly could afford other high-value sources of nutrition like egg, meat, fish and fruits are badly in need to access the life-saving crucial micronutrients from rice, they alleged.
They said rice provides up to 70 per cent of the total caloric and 65 per cent of protein of a Bangladeshis’ daily intake.
“But cost of delay in releasing biofortified crops can be deadly as danger of more children getting stunted and wasted looms large due to emergence of huge numbers of new poor amid a protracted Covid-19 pandemic,” Anwar Faruque, former secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, told The New Nation.
Scientists at Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) informed that they have developed a Bangladeshi breed of golden rice, rich with vitamin-A but it’s been lying with bio-safety regulators for the past four and half years.
“Such delay in product release acting as a disincentive for BRRI scientists, who are also successfully working on developing rice varieties rich with both iron and zinc employing both conventional breeding and genetic engineering techniques,” Dr Md Shahjahan Kabir, Director General of the BRRI, said.
Though they have successfully developed some eight varieties of hi-zinc rice through conventional breeding techniques over the past seven years, so far little move has been taken from the concern authority to make those zinc rice varieties available to the consumers, he said.
The government is spending money on importing six key micronutrients in chemical forms from abroad, turning those into micronutrient kernels in factories, mixing those up with rice and then distributing the industrially fortified rice to the poor and the vulnerable.
“Whereas, if promoted and released in the right time homegrown biofortified rice could have been a much better and cheaper alternative for the nutrition-starved population,” Kabir said.
“Fortification is the practice of deliberately increasing the content of an essential micronutrient, i.e., vitamins and minerals in a food, so as to improve the nutritional quality of the food supply while biofortification is the process by which the nutritional quality of food crops is improved through agronomic practices, conventional plant breeding, or modern biotechnology,” he added.
Overseeing the biotech-derived nutrient rich rice varieties, BRRI scientist Dr Md Abdul Kader also called for expediting the regulatory process as his institution had submitted application for Golden Rice for nearly three years now.
Former secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture Anwar Faruque said Bangladesh’s agricultural successes should be acknowledged and celebrated but we must develop more high-yielding and sustainable crop varieties.
“Bangladesh is in the third phase of agricultural transformation. To go with this wave, speed breeding is the initiative demanded of the times and agri-biotechnology is one of the technologies that can help us achieve the SDGs,” he said.
“With the adoption of biotech crops being developed by Bangladeshi scientists, like BT brinjal, BT cotton, potato resistant to blight and Golden Rice that is vitamin A-enriched, farmers and consumers can be benefitted,” he added.
Golden Rice is a transgenic variety, as a gene from maize has been infused into rice paddy for beta carotene expression. That is why a biosafety approval is a prerequisite for varietal release in Bangladesh.
The BRRI lodged an application with the National Technical Committee on Crop Biotechnology (NTCCB) at the Ministry of Agriculture in 2017 to complete the biosafety review process.
 It then forwarded the application to the National Committee on Biosafety (NCB) at the Ministry of Environment on December 4, 2017. But, the BRRI is yet be received the approval.