January 21, 2008

US scientists discover ways to boost Vitamin A levels in corn

US scientists have recently developed an inexpensive way to breed corn that can boost the Vitamin A content of the crop, an important breakthrough for most countries with Vitamin A deficiencies.

The scientists wanted to increase or "bio-fortify" levels of specific nutrients in crops like corn. Corn contains compounds called "provitamins" including beta-carotene which is used to make Vitamin A.

On Thursday, the US researchers identified in the journal, Science, a naturally mutated gene that enhances the provitamin A level in corn.

Based on this, they developed a cheap way to select the parent stock for breeding corn with the highest provitamin A content.

The recent studies indicate that varieties of this mutated gene can provide on average three-fold higher levels of provitamin A.

There are thousands of corn varieties which differ greatly in terms of Vitamin A levels, the scientists explained. White corn in particular does not contain provitamin A, while yellow varieties have it in varying levels.

The most common techniques for assessing the provitamin A content of corn varieties are currently very expensive for plant breeders, the researchers said. However, with the new method, cost is relatively way cheaper.

Edward Buckler of the USDA and Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said that the new method is less expensive since it will not involve genetic modification of the crop.

Buckler added that Vitamin A deficiency is a big problem throughout the world, as it causes a lot of childhood blindness and a lot of immune deficiencies.

Previous studies have shown that Vitamin A plays a key role in vision improvement, bone growth and regulation of the immune system and other functions.