Researchers develop non-cereal crop to enhance yields and consumer health
Delivering the benefits of agricultural biotechnology to smallholder farmers requires that resources be directed toward staple food crops.
To achieve effect at scale, beneficial traits must be integrated into multiple, elite farmer-preferred varieties with relevance across geographical regions. For the first time, an international team of scientists, led by Narayanan Narayanan, Ph.D., senior research scientist, and Nigel Taylor, Ph.D., associate member and Dorothy J. King Distinguished Investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and their collaborators in Nigeria, led by Ihuoma Okwuonu, Ph.D., of the National Root Crops Research Institute, in Umudike, Nigeria and the United States Department of Agriculture, have developed cassava displaying high-level resistance to cassava mosaic disease (CMD), cassava brown streak disease (CBSD) as well as higher levels of iron and zinc.