Announcing our Fall Public Lecture: Tackling Malnutrition with Biofortification
Our keynote speaker at the WFSC Fall Public Lecture on 12 Septermber (18:30, ETH Zurich, D 1.2), Dr. Maria Isabel Andrade, a 2016 World Food Prize recipient, will discuss the most successful case of biofortification to date: the introduction of the orange flesh sweet potato in Mozambique and Uganda.
Globally, an estimated 2 billion people suffer from “hidden hunger,” a form of malnutrition where the body lacks essential vitamins and minerals to live a healthy life. In looking for solutions to the challenge of hidden hunger, researchers began asking the question: “What if we could increase the micronutrient content of staple food crops, linking nutrition and agriculture and getting nutritious foods to those who need them?” This process of increasing the nutrient content of important food crops, called biofortification, is currently receiving widespread attention for the opportunities it creates to tackle hidden hunger.
The WFSC fall public lecture on 12 September will showcase the most successful case of biofortification to date: the introduction of the orange flesh sweet potato (OFSP) in Mozambique and Uganda. The OFSP was conventionally bred to enrich the vitamin A content of the crop and counter the devastating impacts of vitamin A deficiency in Sub-Saharan Africa. Through carefully designed outreach and nutrition programs, over two million households in 10 African countries have started cultivating and consuming this nutritionally fortified food. This case will be the basis for a broader discussion on the opportunities and limitations of biofortification as an approach to address malnutrition.
Please join us for this insightful event!
Date: 12 September 2017
Time: 17.30-19:00
Place: ETH Zurich, Main Building (HG D 1.2)
This event is open to the public. For organizational reasons, we kindly request that you register external pagehere.
Download the flyer Downloadhere (PDF, 408 KB).
Find out about more WFSC Events
More about the keynote speaker:
Maria Isabel Andrade is one of the recipients of the external page2016 World Food Prize for her work on biofortification to address hidden hunger. Dr. Andrade received a B.Sc. (Agronomy) and a M.Sc. (Plant Genetics) from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. (Plant Breeding and Plant Physiology) from North Carolina State University. She has 30 years of working experience in Africa, focusing on technology transfer, breeding seed systems, and the amelioration of value chains for income-generation. She has spent the last 21 years working in Mozambique, firstly serving as a regional cassava and sweet potato agronomist for the Southern Africa Root Crop Research Network, a program run conjointly by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the International Potato Center (CIP). From 2002-2006 she coordinated a five year IITA project on Accelerated Multiplication and Distribution of Healthy Planting Materials of the Best High Yielding Varieties of Cassava and Sweet potato. In 2006, she joined CIP to manage the SASHA Southern Africa Sweet potato Support Platform bringing together sweet potato breeders from Malawi, Zambia, South Africa, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Angola, with a research emphasis on breeding drought-tolerant sweet potato varieties. She also serves as CIP’s country liaison scientist with the Government of Mozambique.