Malnutrition is a serious problem in the developing world, adversely affecting intellectual and physical development in children, resistance to disease, mortality at childbirth, and the ability to work. An adequate diet is determined both by the total calories and by the content of minerals, vitamins, and proteins. Improving the mineral, vitamin, and protein content of the major food crops within the tropics should have a large positive impact on health and economic productivity in the LDCs.

Potential targets range from the conceptually simple, such as increased iron content in rice, to the challenging, such as elevated protein content in cassava tubers. In the early years of this program, ILTAB will build its in-house capability by developing collaborations with laboratories already experienced in nutrition studies and those experienced in the modification of biosynthetic pathways. Our expertise in genetic transformation of tropical crops should make ILTAB an attractive partner for establishing such collaborations within or outside the Danforth Center.

Objectives:

• to modify the nutritional quality of important tropical food crops

Status of the project:

Targets of such projects will include

• increase of protein and iron content in cassava
• modification of the biochemical quality of starch in cassava
• increase of the vitamin content of golden rice

Collaborators:

• EMBRAPA for cassava starch and others to be identified in the near future.

Basic scientific interests:

Learn how to manipulate biosynthetic pathways in plants. This will build on our capacity to insert large fragments of DNA and to express multiple transgenes in crop genomes.

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