Biofortification: A New Approach to Enhance the Nutrition in Maize Crop

Abstract

Approximately, 3 billion people are suffering from micronutrient deficiency worldwide. The deficiencies of micronutrients in maize crops ensure irregular diets are common among a large population. Biofortification, the mean of rearing nutrients into food crops, administers the sustainability and deep-rooted strategy to distribute micronutrients to agrarian populations in growing countries. The biofortification strategy of maize crops has focused on three ambiguous micronutrients such as vitamin A, Iron, and especially zinc to increase nutrition level. The concentration of nutrients in maize crops can be increased by using genetic manipulation, conventional breeding, and agronomic biofortification. Biofortification is being resulted to produce nutrients at a large-scale and enhance yields, concentrations, and nutrition levels of targeted nutrients in maize crops. To accelerate the development of biofortification techniques is essential to enhance the availability of staple crops to overcome the malnutrition in a population. This review highlights the advancements to enhance maize crop nutrition and analyses the challenges faced in malnutrition.