Dakar — While fortifying staple foods, such as wheat flour and salt, has become routine in urban parts of malnutrition-prone West Africa, bio-fortification - the breeding of more nutritious vegetables, grains and pulses - is still a relatively new phenomenon for the region, but it is set to explode over the next decade, say food security experts.
The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) houses HarvestPlus, a programme that breeds varieties of sweet potato, cassava, plantain, corn, rice and other staples enriched with vitamin A, zinc and iron - the nutrients that the World Health Organization says people in developing countries are most deficient in.
...