Golden Bananas for Africa and Asia

Micronutrient deficiencies, particularly vitamin A efficiency (VAD) and iron deficiency anaemia (IDA), are one of the top public health challenges in the world and primarily occurring in developing countries. Strategies such as food fortification and supplements have been very successful but there remains a very significant population severely impacted. Biofortification, the development of staple crops with elevated levels of pro-vitamin A (PVA) or iron, is rapidly progressing as strategy to reduce VAD and IDA in developing countries. In some instances, biofortified staples can be developed by conventional breeding such as high iron beans and high PVA sweet potatoes. In other instances, genetic modification is the appropriate strategy with the best example being Golden Rice. In Uganda and surrounding countries, clinical VAD is stubbornly high. The staple crop is cooking bananas. In collaboration with the National Agricultural Research Organisation of Uganda, we have developed bananas with significantly elevated levels of PVA by over-expressing a single transgene, phytoene synthase isolated from a naturally high PVA banana, Asupina. We now have a large number of transgenic lines in the field in Uganda to identity elite lines with greater than target level of PVA for progression through to farmer release, planned for 2021.