Biofortification MCQ - Practice Questions & Answers

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Plant Breeding for Improved Food Quality: Biofortification is considered one of the most asked concept.
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Plant Breeding for Improved Food Quality: Biofortification

Biofortification is the process by which the nutritional quality of food crops is improved through agronomic practices, conventional plant breeding, or modern biotechnology.
Biofortification differs from conventional fortification in that biofortification aims to increase nutrient levels in crops during plant growth rather than through manual means during processing of the crops.
Biofortification may therefore present a way to reach populations where supplementation and conventional fortification activities may be difficult to implement and/or limited.
Examples of biofortification projects include:
- iron-biofortification of rice, beans, sweet potato, cassava and legumes;
- zinc-biofortification of wheat, rice, beans, sweet potato and maize;
- provitamin A carotenoid-biofortification of sweet potato, maize and cassava; and
- amino acid and protein-biofortification of sorghum and cassava.
Wheat variety, Atlas 66, having a high protein content, has been used as a donor for improving cultivated wheat.
The Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi has also released several vegetable crops that are rich in vitamins and minerals:
- Vitamin A enriched carrots, spinach, pumpkin;
- vitamin C enriched bitter gourd, bathua, mustard, tomato; iron and calcium enriched spinach and bathua;
- Protein enriched beans – broad, lablab, French and garden peas.