A biofortified potato could finally tackle one of the most persistent childhood diseases

Anemia remains one of the most rampant yet preventable childhood diseases around the world, affecting two out of every five preschoolers.

Often caused by insufficient iron in diets that limits cognitive and motor development, more than 6% of children in the US were anemic as of 2019.

Yet the condition is exponentially more prevalent in low- and middle-income countries. In India, around one in every two children under the age of five has anemia. In Yemen and parts of Africa, close to 80 per cent of children are affected.

Moreover, families in low-income countries are also less likely to be able to afford the supplements or iron-rich foods, including meat, needed to prevent or treat the disease, creating a vicious cycle that holds back children from reaching their full potential.

When healthy diets are out of reach for more than 3 billion people worldwide, the most affordable, efficient way to improve nutrition and reduce diet-related illness is to do so at source.

We at the International Potato Center have seen firsthand how the biofortification of food crops with additional vital nutrients can reduce malnutrition and ensure children get the vitamins and minerals they need for healthy development.

Our World Food Prize winning team of scientists developed the orange-fleshed sweetpotato, which has reached more than 6 million households in Africa alone and helped reduce the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency, which is the leading cause of childhood blindness.

Now, researchers have set their sights on using biofortification to tackle the wicked problem of anemia with iron-enriched potatoes.

Bred using traditional plant breeding approaches, a high-iron potato offers hope of reaching a large number of children, as well as pregnant and breastfeeding women, the demographic groups most vulnerable to anemia.

By enriching a widely eaten crop like potato, we can ensure that consumers get high-quality nutrition without needing to change their diets. Even in the US, potato is the most commonly consumed vegetable, with similar per capita consumption to India. In Peru, where half of rural children and one in five rural women suffer with anemia, up to 800 grams of potatoes are eaten every day.

Early research shows that biofortified advanced potato clones can provide up to 50% of the iron requirements of women living in areas of high potato consumption in Peru. Of all the iron-rich crops developed to date, potato has the highest iron bioavailability, providing the greatest nutritional returns. Iron absorption from potato was found to reach almost 30 per cent, compared to 13% from purple-fleshed potato and just 7.5% from pearl millet.

Using potato as a vehicle for boosting iron levels also means consumers need not buy more expensive foods or supplements to improve their diets, increasing access to healthy, nutritious foods among the poorest.

Potato is already the third most important crop in the world, produced in more than 156 countries and regularly consumed by more than a billion people. As a hardy, quickly maturing crop, its high productivity and resilience means it remains affordable and widely available.

Finally, the biofortification of potato can also help protect its nutritional quality against the impact of climate change. Studies have shown that high atmospheric CO2 concentration can reduce the level of iron in potato. This makes iron enrichment a vital strategy not only to improve diets now but to safeguard an affordable source of vitamins and minerals in the future.

Thanks to our experience with orange-fleshed sweetpotato and other biofortified crops, the International Potato Center has a wealth of expertise and a vast network of partners to develop and deliver iron-rich potato at scale, reaching millions of households in a cost-effective way.

With the iron-enriched potato, we see enormous potential to extend this legacy and continue to use agricultural innovation to tackle diet-related illness, sparing millions of people around the world from the pernicious impact of malnutrition.

Hugo Campos is roots, tubers and banana breeding lead at CGIAR, the world’s largest publicly funded agriculture research organization.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: World Food Prize: A biofortified potato could help fight anemia