It’s a challenge that Flinders University plant physiologist and biochemist Professor James Stangoulis has been successfully tackling for two decades: improving the nutrition of staple food crops with remarkable biofortification breakthroughs.
“While the focus is on nutrition for human consumption, it also has the important benefit of helping to deliver higher yields on nutrient-poor soils,” says Professor Stangoulis. “The target is to improve the mega-crops.”
When international biofortification programs were initially discussed in 2003, it was seen as an ambitious idea – that agriculture would be the driving force that could deliver better nutrition to people though improved seed traits.
“Plant scientists had the ideas, but it wouldn’t have come to fruition without economists working in tandem with us,” says Professor Stangoulis. “They plugged into the necessary funding and commercial distribution channels that ensured our research would be translated into crops that would be grown in the communities that most need them.”
In collaboration with international plant breeding partners, this has enabled the team at Flinders to apply their specific expertise to address crop problems prevalent in many countries, and with staple grains that are vital to enable broad community subsistence. This has included lentils in Nepal, rice in Bangladesh and Madagascar, maize in South and Latin America, wheat in Zimbabwe and pearl millet and sorghum in India.
Crucial to this has been Flinders’ ongoing funding support from HarvestPlus, a global agricultural development organisation, with key financial supporters including the United Kingdom Government, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United States Government’s Feed the Future initiative, Global Affair Canada, the European Commission, and donors to the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH). HarvestPlus is also supported by the John D and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation.
Flinders’ role has been critical in the global success of this expansive program, with the University’s analytical capability able to validate samples from all global breeding programs – to swiftly measure, assess and identify the best germplasm for further development in breeding programs. It has also played a major role in setting up analytical labs within breeding institutions worldwide, and this helps to accelerate the breeding of nutrient-dense crops.
“It’s not just an environmental effect you’re measuring. You make better choices based on genetics.”
Developing molecular marker work – to identify the best candidate genes that are involved in improved nutrition within seeds – is not easy – which is why the importance of cross-disciplinary collaborations in this field of research is so important and delivering strong results.
“The complexity involved in this seed research and the need for great outcomes demands much broader conversations, which is why we talk with nutritionists and economists. This research busts out of the existing silos and limited thinking. It’s exciting to take on the experience and knowledge of thinkers from outside your area of expertise.”
Ensuring adequate zinc levels in grains has been a fundamental problem. Mild-to-moderate zinc deficiency affects up to one-third of the global population, leading to impaired immune system function, skin disorders, cognitive dysfunction, and increased susceptibility to lower respiratory tract infections, malaria and diarrhoeal disease. It is responsible for more than 800,000 deaths every year.
Breeding for higher zinc concentration in grains helps farmers provide better growth on zinc deficient soils – a major problem worldwide, including in Southern Australia. Identifying genes that effectively boost nutrients into the grain involves an entirely different mechanism in the plant to how it would transport nutrients from the soil. The efficiency of improved seed helps produce better crops and more reliable yields.
This proven process is now being applied globally, with the results having been marked against control crops to prove that improved targets are being effectively met. Results have been universally positive.
“The developing world is really embracing these new varieties and what HarvestPlus research groups are achieving is giving everyone the know-how at low cost,” says Professor Stangoulis.
While much of this work was initially intended to benefit developing countries, ultimately the improved seed with higher nutritional value is also being introduced to Australia through CGIAR collaborations with their breeding partners in Australia. “We will all benefit greatly from being plugged into this vast and cohesive global network.”
Having spent the best part of 20 years working to improve the presence of iron and zinc in food crops, Professor Stangoulis is now focusing his research attention on calcium – with a specific aim to help improve children’s nutrition.
He believes that breeding new strains of millet may provide the best solution, as millet is already packed with nutrition and some of the many millet varieties are very drought-tolerant. “I expect that we’ll be able to get more speedy results on this,” he says. “There are high throughput analysis programs already in place, and there are laboratories around the world that now have the necessary equipment and expertise to swiftly do analysis of trial crops that once took ages.
“The frustrations that we went through in the early years, going through so much trial and error, were all worthwhile. Now, we have proven answers and tested methods. The seed breeders know what to look for, so results from the next areas of crop research will be so much faster.”
Professor Stangoulis also studies the stress physiology of plants, which has growing importance as this knowledge can provide a clearer understanding of how climate change will affect crops – especially how abiotic stress affects plants, and how increased heat in our atmosphere could affect the nutritional value of crops.
“It’s an important future investment,” says Professor Stangoulis.
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