Biofortification Program Reduces Vitamin A Deficiency in Uganda
From 2007-2009, HarvestPlus, a component project of CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH), along with its partners, have disseminated orange sweet potato—to see if Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD) could be reduced—to more than 24,000 households in Mozambique and Uganda.
After three years, a study published this month at the Journal of Nutrition gave conclusive evidence that orange sweet potato (OSP) provided significant amounts of vitamin A to malnourished Ugandan children and women and that a modest improvement in vitamin A levels in the body was measurable in some cases.
Uganda is among the African countries reported to be at high risk, with 28% of children and 23% of women estimated to be vitamin A deficient. VAD can impair immunity and cause eye damage that can lead to blindness and even death.
View HarvestPlus' news release at http://www.harvestplus.org/content/orange-sweet-potato-makes-case-biofortification-works. For more information, contact Yassir Islam at y.islam@cgiar.org.
This article is part of the Crop Biotech Update, a weekly summary of world developments in agri-biotech for developing countries, produced by the Global Knowledge Center on Crop Biotechnology, International Service for the Aquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications SEAsiaCenter (ISAAA)
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