Micronutrient Malnutrition Case Study

807 Words2 Pages

Introduction
Micronutrient Malnutrition is a crucial health issue worldwide. More than 50% of the world population suffer from micronutrient malnutrition and are mostly in underdeveloped nations. Micronutrient malnutrition or hidden hunger occurs not only because of not enough of food intake but the food is not containing sufficient micronutrient. In the developing countries, the dietary foods based on the cereals which are rich in carbohydrate but contains a few minerals and micronutrients. Moreover, monotonous diet (Hefferon, 2015) and low consumption of meat and meat products cause micronutrient malnutrition more severe. There is four critical micronutrient malnutrition: iron, zinc, iodine and vitamin A. The most prevalent micronutrient …show more content…

Iron deficiency causes the psychomotor development degradation, mental development disorder (Wirth et al., 2009), reduced the productivity and immune function, risked pregnancy causes premature delivery, and resistance to the cold temperature. Thus, the strategies to reduce iron deficiency are significantly necessary to improve health and welfare. The efforts that can be undertaken to diminish iron deficiency are providing a diversity of food, food supplement, food fortification, and biofortification. However, the food diversity is ineffective for implementing in the developing nations which depend on the local food product that often limited in variety and have low income. Likewise, food fortification and supplementation are not applicable strategies in the underdeveloped countries because costly. Furthermore, regarding iron deficiency, food fortification is not suitable because of the most soluble and absorbable iron compounds, for example, FeSO4 is tasteless, while the non-soluble iron compounds are not bioavailable or poorly absorbed (Wirth et al., 2009). Hence, iron biofortification, the strategy increasing the micronutrient contents in the edible part of foods, reducing the concentration of anti-nutrient and improving the nutrient absorbing capability, seems …show more content…

The first transgenic approach is enhancing iron concentration in rice endosperm which relies on a single gene (overexpression of ferritin gene). Ferritin is the primary storage of a soluble and bioavailable form of iron protein in all of the aerobic organisms. The expression of the single gene on the rice endosperm has been presented that this transgenic rice contains a two-fold in iron accumulation than non-transgenic rice (Masuda et al., 2013). Further research on transgenic rice is using two targeted expression genes, ferritin and nicotianamine synthase. The synergetic effect of overexpressing ferritin consequents increasing in iron storage and nicotianamine synthases improve the capability to uptake iron. Subsequently, this transgenic rice which involves targeted gene of ferritin and synthesis action of nicotianamine showed improving iron content on endosperm rice more than six times (Wirth et al., 2009). Another research on transgenic rice by introducing soybean ferritin gene and three barley genes (a mugineic acid synthase gene, the nicotianamine synthase gene, and two nicotianamine aminotransferase genes) is T3 transgenic rice. This T3 rice contains 2.5 times higher than non-transgenic rice grows in the calcareous soil and four times greater in the normal soil (Masuda et al.,

More about Micronutrient Malnutrition Case Study

Open Document