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Genetic Enhancement Perspectives and Prospects for Grain Nutrients Density

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Sorghum in the 21st Century: Food – Fodder – Feed – Fuel for a Rapidly Changing World

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Abstract

Diet-induced micronutrient malnutrition continues to be a major challenge globally, especially in the developing world. With the ever-increasing population, it becomes a daunting task to feed millions of mouths with nutritious food. It is time to reorient agricultural systems to produce quality food to supply the calorie and nutrient requirements needed by the human body. Biofortification is the process of improving micronutrients density by genetic means. It is cheaper and sustainable and complements well with the nutrient supplementation and fortification—the short-term strategies that are currently deployed to address the micronutrient malnutrition. Sorghum is one of the important food crops globally, adapted to semi-arid tropics, and there is increased awareness on its nutritional importance. Further, there is great opportunity to improve sorghum for nutritional quality. This chapter deals about the genetic enhancement perspectives and prospects for improving the nutritional quality with main emphasis on grain micronutrient density in sorghum.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the funding support by HarvestPlus Challenge Program and the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India for carrying out biofortification research. Thanks are also due to CRP—Grain Legumes and Dryland Cereals for partial support for carrying out this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Patancheru, Telangana, India

    Ashok Kumar Are, S. Gorthy, J. Jayakumar, A. Kotla, R. Phuke, A. Gaddameedi & A. Kunapareddy

  2. Vasantrao Naik Marathwada Krishi Vidyapeeth (VNMKV), Parbhani, Maharashtra, India

    S. P. Mehtre

  3. ICAR-Indian Institute of Millets Research, Hyderabad, India

    K. Hariprasanna

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  1. Ashok Kumar Are
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  2. S. Gorthy
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  3. S. P. Mehtre
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  4. K. Hariprasanna
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  5. J. Jayakumar
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  6. A. Kotla
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  7. R. Phuke
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  8. A. Gaddameedi
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  9. A. Kunapareddy
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Correspondence to Ashok Kumar Are .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. ICAR-Indian Institute of Millets Research, Hyderabad, Telangana, India

    Vilas A. Tonapi

  2. ICAR-Indian Institute of Millets Research, Hyderabad, Telangana, India

    Harvinder Singh Talwar

  3. International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Patancheru, Telangana, India

    Ashok Kumar Are

  4. ICAR-Indian Institute of Millets Research, Hyderabad, Telangana, India

    B. Venkatesh Bhat

  5. Formerly, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Patancheru, Telangana, India

    Ch. Ravinder Reddy

  6. Department of Agricultural Economics, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA

    Timothy J. Dalton

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Are, A.K. et al. (2020). Genetic Enhancement Perspectives and Prospects for Grain Nutrients Density. In: Tonapi, V.A., Talwar, H.S., Are, A.K., Bhat, B.V., Reddy, C.R., Dalton, T.J. (eds) Sorghum in the 21st Century: Food – Fodder – Feed – Fuel for a Rapidly Changing World. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8249-3_31

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