IRRI: Rice and human health

Gerard Barry, coordinator of the Golden Rice Network, explains this program of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI; http://irri.org ) program on Rice and Human Health: overcoming the consequences of poverty.

This program is a direct result of the Institute's commitment to improving the nutrition and health of poor rice consumers and farmers—-a goal of IRRI's Strategic Plan, Bringing hope, improving lives http://www.irri.org/bringinghope/improvinglives.pdf

Under this program, IRRI improves the nutritional value of rice for poor rice consumers.

Micronutrient deficiencies, especially of iron, zinc, and vitamin A, afflict millions of poor Asians—people who receive most of their nutrition from rice and who stand to benefit from consuming more nutritious rice.

In this light, IRRI is undertaking projects that will deliver increased dietary levels of iron, zinc, and pro-vitamin A (the precursor of vitamin A) through improved, biofortified rice varieties.

This research has a limited amount of direct support from IRRI and derives or has derived most of its funding from the HarvestPlus Challenge Program (a multi-institute program to develop nutritionally enhanced crops), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Grand Challenge in Global Health #9 of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (through the University of Freiburg), the Asian Development Bank, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and the Rural Development Agency of the government of Korea.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• rice
• nutrition
• IRRI
• poverty
• poor
• human
• health
• ADB
• Korea