Rice provides 40-70% of the total calorie needs in Asia, making it the number one food staple crop in the region.
Despite the progress made, and estimated more than 800 million people of the world still suffer from malnutrition, particularly micronutrient deficiency related malnutrition.
Staple crops, including rice, are therefore being targeted as an alternative long term sustainable delivery mechanism of dietary micronutrients for humans.
However, efforts to increase the micronutrient content of staple grains will have to be coupled with the satisfactory agronomic performances of yield increases, pest resistance, and tolerance to other environmental stresses.
In this context, genetic engineering is being used in innovate ways as an effective too to facilitate and accelerate the progress towards achieving these multi-faceted goals of nutritional and economic benefits of rice to farmers.
Nutritional improvement of the rice plant includes loading and harvesting rice grains with higher than normal levels of micronutrients such as iron, zinc, provitamin A and lysine.
Such improved rice by conventional an excellent opportunity to reduce malnutrition, particularly micronutrient deficiency related malnutrition in humans.
Rice in Human Nutrition
