Rice biofortification: A brief review

Abstract

Green revolution significantly enhanced the productivity and achieved the food security problem of developing nations like India, but in terms of dietary diversification it is far away from the developed nations. About half of the global population reported to have deficiency of Zn, Fe and vitamin-A leading to impaired immune function, iron deficiency anemia and xerophthalmia respectively. To overcome the problems of micronutrient deficiencies, people advised to be cautious about the diversification of their daily diet, but most of the people can’t afford to supplement their diet due to poor economic condition. Biofortification of staple crops like rice and wheat got significant scope to solve the problems of nutrient deficiencies. Agronomic biofortification of crops has advantages of cost effectiveness, rapid result, accessibility and ease in application of agro-techniques over breeding and biotechnology based biofortification. There are different agronomic biofortification methods i.e. variability in method of nutrient application, dose of nutrition, sensitive crop stages for nutrition, use of biofertilizers or plant growth promotors and minimum or zero tillage practice.