Folk rice: Genetic storehouse for biofortification: A review

Abstract

Micronutrient malnutrition, commonly known as ‘hidden hunger’ mainly due to iron, zinc and pro-vitamin A deficiencies, has emerged as one of the major health problems worldwide. According to recent finding by WHO and FAO, around 3 billion people are at risk for zinc deficiency, 2 billion people are anaemic due to iron deficiency and about 150 million are deficient in vitamin A. These micronutrient deficiencies impose a considerable disease burden to the society through creating adverse functional outcomes include stunting growth, increased susceptibility to infectious diseases, physical impairments, cognitive losses, blindness, and premature mortality. Rice is the major staple food and source of energy for more than half of the world’s population. In comparison to other cereal crop rice contain meagre amount of micro nutrient like protein (6-7%), Zn (10-33 ppm), Fe (2-34 ppm) and deficit in pro-vitamin A. Unfortunately, due to gradual genetic erosion the genetic store house of land races and traditional varieties are gradually depleted by high yielding varieties which are poor source of essential micronutrients such as Zn, Fe and pro-vitamin A in their polished (white) form. Nowadays, utilization of molecular markers associated with target allele (MAS) helps in identifying desirable segregants thereby considerably shortening the breeding cycle. Once promising high-yielding, high-nutrient lines emerge then these lines are tested in multi-location trials for confirming their stable performance for growing in mega environment.