Program Results

Introduction to the event

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 2 billion people suffer from iron deficiency (https://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/ida/en/), which is the most common and widespread disorder in the world.  This is often the result of inadequate diets that consist mainly of starch from inexpensive staple crops such as rice, wheat and cassava, and low consumption of vegetables, fruits and animal products. Iron deficiency affects a large number of women and children, also in industrialized countries. These people are anemic and their health is often further compromised by infectious diseases. As the WHO points out “Iron deficiency and anaemia reduce the work capacity of individuals and entire populations, bringing serious economic consequences and obstacles to national development. Overall, it is the most vulnerable, the poorest and the least educated who are disproportionately affected by iron deficiency, and it is they who stand to gain the most by its reduction.” Many interventions to reduce the health burden caused by iron deficiency have failed. There is a general consensus in the scientific community that the density of minerals and vitamins in food made from staple crops that are eaten widely by the poor must be increased to improve human health, either through conventional plant breeding or by metabolic engineering, also known as biofortification.

In my laboratory at ETH Zurich in Switzerland we pioneered the biofortification of rice with iron, zinc and b-carotene, which is another essential nutrient that our body needs for producing vitamin A. This research is led by my senior colleague Dr. Navreet Bhullar and a dedicated group of PhD students. Rice is eaten by nearly half of the world population, but this staple food has very low levels of iron and zinc, and no b-carotene in the polished rice grain that is consumed. It is impossible to increase these important micronutrients in the rice grain by conventional breeding because all available rice genetic germplasm does not have adequate iron, zinc and b-carotene levels that could be introduced into widely used rice varieties grown by farmers. Today’s biotechnology methods substantially reduce the time frame in which a multi-nutrient crop is produced and identified. For example, we accomplished a single locus multi-nutrient trait improvement in rice for iron, zinc and β-carotene. These lines express stacked genes for iron and zinc transport together with iron storage (nicotianamine synthase 1, ferritin) and b-carotene biosynthesis (carotene desaturase, phytoene synthase) in a single DNA construct inserted into the rice genome to increase iron, zinc and β-carotene content in the rice endosperm. This novel approach is encouraging and opens new perspectives for developing multi-nutrient staple crop varieties in one-step, especially in countries with prevalent micronutrient deficiencies. It exemplifies an effective and sustainable way of addressing multiple micronutrient deficiencies that often co-occur in affected populations. 

The visionary Yu-shan scholarship established by the Taiwan Government gives our research groups at ETH Zurich and the National Chung Hsing University a unique and important opportunity to test the agronomic performance of our novel rice varieties and also start a breeding program to introduce the nutritional trait into other rice varieties that are consumed in countries such as Bangladesh, Philippines, Indonesia or Nigeria where iron anaemia and vitamin A deficiency are prevalent and rice is a major staple food. With NCHU as partner we are now successfully conducting large field experiments in a confined environment. The last two seasons have already produced very encouraging results, which show that the improved nutrient trait is stable in the field. Our research partnership between Taiwan and Switzerland is also a valuable opportunity to build closer academic and cultural ties between our two beautiful countries.