Do you know that we been eating less nutritious wheat and wheat products all these years? It was some 10,000 years ago that ancient farmers first domesticated wheat to breed as a crop that was perfectly suited to making food. But it seems that somewhere along the line, farmers unintentionally took out a gene that packs the plant full of goodness. However, won’t be the same as scientists have found a way to fix that old mistake by reintroducing a gene that was ‘lost’ over the years as the wild plant was domesticated.
Researchers at the University of California, Davis; the U.S. Department of Agriculture; and the University of Haifa in Israel have cloned a gene from wild wheat that increases the protein, zinc and iron content in the grain, potentially offering a solution to nutritional deficiencies affecting hundreds of millions of children around the world. Wheat remains one of the world’s major crops, providing approximately one-fifth of all calories consumed by humans, therefore, even small increases in wheat’s nutritional value may help decrease deficiencies in protein and key micronutrients.
The magic bullet still needs a test in different environment including soil quality that can even influence the health value of plants. But the development is open to all anyone who asks for it, we will get the seeds. The university has a patent on the gene, but the plants are in the public domain.
However, the discovery is sought of a solution to more than 160 million children across the world that lack adequate protein, which is vital for growth and development. How much the new research will help the developing world, however, depends on whether the resources can be found to mount similar breeding campaigns there. Also at the same time, it is extremely naive to think that by just creating a new GM crop we’re going to overcome the economic and social problems that are the root of poverty and starvation in the developing countries. These aren’t problems one can solve with miracle science but this of course is the step heading in the right direction. Moreover, the problem of malnutrition is more a problem of distribution.
Via: Reuters
