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Biofortification: A Promising Approach Toward Eradication of Hidden Hunger

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Microbial Interventions in Agriculture and Environment

Abstract

Biofortification is an innovative sustainable approach that involves developing foods with improved nutritional status. It represents a cost-effective, feasible, and eco-friendly means to deal with current grim situation of malnutrition in majority of the developing countries. It’s an advanced foreseeable prospect that emphasizes on human health improvement by prevention of diseases with nutrition, not with drugs. Biofortification is usually accomplished by classical breeding methods or by genetic engineering of plants. This concept of nutrient enrichment is gaining worldwide attention as it’s a revolutionary technique to influence human health globally. The preceding years have witnessed a boost in research dealing with fortifying edible crops with micronutrients, vitamins, and other essential nutrients to significantly boost up their nutritional value. Recent advancements in genetic engineering and genomics offered a foundation to scale up commercialization of biofortified foods. Despite intensive research underway, still major constraints like stability, storage, regulatory, and biosafety issues regarding biofortified crops must be addressed. This chapter summarizes the different crops fortified with essential nutrients, methods of biofortification, efficacy and economics of the process, monitoring, control measures, aspects of society perspective, and future research to accelerate impact and progress based on interdisciplinary research.

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  1. Both the authors are contributed equally to this chapter.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agriculture, Shaheed Udham Singh College of Research and Technology, Tangori, Punjab, India

    Amita Sharma

  2. Department of Botany, Dolphin PG College of Science and Agriculture, Chunni Kalan, Punjab, India

    Rajnish Kumar Verma

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  1. Amita Sharma
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  2. Rajnish Kumar Verma
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biotechnology, ICAR – NBAIM, Maunath Bhanjan, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Dhananjaya Pratap Singh

  2. Department of Chemistry & Biotechnology, School of Science, Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia

    Vijai Kumar Gupta

  3. Department of Biotechnology, ICAR – NBAIM, Maunath Bhanjan, Uttar Pradesh, India

    Ratna Prabha

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Sharma, A., Verma, R.K. (2019). Biofortification: A Promising Approach Toward Eradication of Hidden Hunger. In: Singh, D., Gupta, V., Prabha, R. (eds) Microbial Interventions in Agriculture and Environment. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8391-5_12

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