About 800 million people are currently suffering from hunger in the world, and some 2 billion suffer from some type of important nutritional deficiency. Addressing global food security becomes essential when the population is projected to increase to 9.6 billion by 2050. This will require a global food supply increase of 70 percent, as well as more nutritious foods, especially for countries with problems of nutritional deficiency.
Strategies to combat this have included international food aid programs that provide supplements through pills, or fortification of local foods in the processing phase. However, the success of these efforts has been limited, due to such factors as inconsistent external funding and limited purchasing power and access to markets and hospitals by poor populations.
Another promising strategy — one that dodges these challenges and offers long-term sustainability — has been using plant breeding programs to develop staple crops with higher nutrient levels. These biofortified crops allow people to access specific nutrients through their daily diet, such as rice in Asia, sorghum and banana in Africa, or corn in Latin America. In this way, biofortified crops are an important alternative to alleviate malnutrition in the world.
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