ABSTRACT
Micronutrients are inevitably essential for housekeeping, enzymatic activities and homeostasis. The micronutrients comprise vitamins and minerals. A diet with well-balanced amount of vitamins and minerals can be difficult to maintain. But now due to the recent advancements in agricultural biotechnology, it is possible to produce nutritionally enriched food crops with enhanced bioavailability of micronutrients. Vegetatively propagated crops are more suitable for biofortification especially fruits as their bioavailability will be more due to lack of processing. It can be achieved by strategies like introducing the novel gene, overexpression of a target gene, down regulating the expression of interfering genes in biosynthesis pathways. To combat vitamin A deficiency (VAD), vitamin A enriched biofortified golden rice with two genes were developed. A strategic approach to overcome iron deficiency is to lower the phytate level and to increase the iron content. Ferritin was introduced with threefold increase of iron in the rice endosperm. Biofortification 356can also be achieved through modern biotechnological approaches like transgenic, cis-genic, RNAi, and CRISPR-Cas based genome editing (GE). Biofortification promises for the nutritive improvement in crops. As there are lot of regulations in permitting these GMOs into circulation, cultivating all nutrition rich conventional crops on street roads can alleviate hidden hunger in few months. The conventional fast growing Moringa, papaya, amla, Amaranthus, Sesbania, and curry leaf can be grown as street plants with other fruit trees to achieve ‘Nutritional Revolution’ rather than searching for costly techniques. However, apart from SMART agriculture, having expertise in recent techniques will help during adverse conditions. Biofortified crops hold a great future in alleviating malnutrition of the global population.
