Orange sweet potato a hit in Mozambique

Mozambique, like many poor countries, has a high prevalence of vitamin A deficiency, which can erode the immune system and cause blindness. Pregnant woman and young children in low-income countries are often hit the hardest, according to the WHO, and 600,000 children are estimated to die from a lack of vitamin A each year.

Scientists have been working on the sweet potato for years, in the hope of battling deficiencies in vitamin A that afflict around 200 million of the world's poor. A programme aiming to persuade Mozambican villagers to switch from eating white and yellow sweet potato to a biofortified orange version, which contains more of a precursor of vitamin A, has proved successful, with two-thirds of the targeted households adopting the new variety.

For three years, the biofortified sweet potato was created using conventional techniques to introduce six varieties to the Zambezia province.

The study, published in the British Journal of Nutrition last month (10 October) showed that the varieties were welcomed. It did not assess whether eating orange sweet potato caused levels of vitamin A to rise in the blood, though a previous, much smaller study in the same area had demonstrated this connection. "There has been a growing body of evidence to show that betacarotene [a precursor of vitamin A] in orange sweet potato is bioavailable and converted to vitamin A in the body," said Christine Hotz, former coordinator of HarvestPlus Nutrition, which led the research. HarvestPlus said that new, more drought-tolerant, orange-fleshed sweet potato varieties will be distributed to 120,000 households over the next two years.

The complete article is available at:

http://www.scidev.net/en/health/nutrition/news/orange-sweet-potato-a-hit-in-mozambique-say-inventors.html

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Orange sweet potato a hit in Mozambique

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