Biofortification for Nutrient Content and Aroma Enrichment in Rice (Oryza sativa L.)

Abstract

Biofortification is the process of enhancing the content and density of vitamins and minerals that are improving nutritional quality in a staple crop through conventional plant breeding or agronomic practices or using transgenic approaches. Rice (Oryza sativa L.) ranks second in most widely consumed cereals in the world and used as a staple food for more than 60% of the world population. Micronutrients are essential for plant growth and development as well as for animal and human health. In the last two decades, the concept of hidden hunger arises in which one-sixth of the world’s population suffers from hunger that is a deficiency of micronutrients, vitamins, and nutrients. Rice grain has large genetic variability in the concentration of micronutrients; hence, it is included in the biofortification program, and breeding of new rice cultivars with an enhanced level of grain micronutrients is one of the most sustainable and cost-effective strategies for preventing hidden hunger. To overcome the major problem of hidden hunger and looking to the future, the agricultural community has a fundamental responsibility to produce crop enriched with minerals and vitamins to secure national health, and there is a need to increase the nutritional quality of food through various methods like supplementation, fortifications, etc. Aroma acts as a supporting trait for nutrition; therefore, it needs to be considered in biofortification. It has been shown to enhance food appetite in hungry and in satiated states, so it may be used to stimulate meal initiation and appetite in people that are malnourished. Here the process and progress of biofortification with micronutrients have been briefly described, and future prospects to alleviate widespread micronutrient deficiencies in the human population are discussed.