SciDev.Net (London)
Munyaradzi Makoni
28 November 2011
Cape Town — Orange sweet potato that has been bred to contain more of a precursor of vitamin A has successfully passed a crucial test of its practical use.
Scientists have been working on the sweet potato for years, in the hope of battling deficiencies in vitamin A that afflict around 200 million of the world’s poor.
A new study provides the first strong evidence that the vegetable actually boosts levels of vitamin A in the blood when it is eaten, to levels higher than those found in vitamin A-rich foods such as papaya, mango and leafy green vegetables.
Researchers distributed the potato to more than 10,000 households in Zambezia Province in Mozambique, where people tend to eat roots and tubers – poor in vitamin A – rather than maize.
Mozambique, like many poor countries, has a high prevalence of vitamin A deficiency, which can erode the immune system and cause blindness. Pregnant woman and young children in low-income countries are often hit the hardest, according to the WHO, and 600,000 children are estimated to die from a lack of vitamin A each year.
The biofortified sweet potato was created using conventional techniques. For three years, researchers used agricultural extension methods and market development activities, combined with ‘demand creation’ and nutrition education, to introduce six varieties to the province.
The study, published in the British Journal of Nutrition last month (10 October) showed that average vitamin A intake doubled in children and women in the trial.
“There has been a growing body of evidence to show that the betacarotene [a precursor of vitamin A] in orange sweet potato is bioavailable and converted to vitamin A in the body,” Christine Hotz, former coordinator of HarvestPlus Nutrition, which led the research, told SciDev.Net.
As a result of the project nearly two-thirds of Mozambican households in the province have adopted the new varieties, while many farmers have replaced the sweet potato that they produce on their farms.
By the end of the project, orange sweet potato was providing more than 70 per cent of all vitamin A intake and was the third most important food crop (after maize and rice) in the diet of children, Hotz said. Previously the vegetable contributed to only two per cent of vitamin A intake.
Maria Andrade, a senior breeder with the International Potato Center, in Peru, said that the orange sweet potato is a good crop for food security.
Yassir Islam, spokesperson for HarvestPlus, said that the International Potato Center would be distributing the new varieties to 120,000 households over the next two years.
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