GLOBALLY micronutrient deficiencies are leading to an increased incidence of morbidity and mortality rate particularly amongst the children – the weakest link in the chain. According to human nutritionists, this worldwide “hidden hunger” can be managed by diversified diet including fruits, vegetables, pulses, fish and meat etc., but such luxury is unaffordable for a large proportion of population in developing countries like Pakistan. The second best approach is by way of nutrient-dense staple crops.
Pakistan stands eighth among the ranking of highest wheat producing countries worldwide. As a leading food grain, wheat occupies the central position in agriculture and economy. It is not only the major staple food grain but also the food security crop of Pakistan. It is unfortunate that the agriculture sector is not adopting the approaches with the potential to substantially improve the nutrition of the masses that solely rely on staple cereals. Considerable proportion of diseases due to malnourishment can be cured merely by adopting diets that include micronutrients biofortified grains. This fact is forcing to change the concept of agriculture towards a sustainable productive system of nutritious food rather than defining in terms of production only.
Enriching edible parts of the plants with substances of nutritional importance is biofortification. Biofortification is a pragmatic and easy option in coping malnourishment. Out of the various biofortification means (conventional breeding /transgenic approaches etc.), agronomic biofortification is safe cost-effective and short term approach of nutrient enrichment of staple cereals.
Manganese (Mn) is one of the vital elements of life equally important for plants as well as for humans though required in trace amounts. Manganese in plants being a central ion of energy generating biosynthetic machinery holds prime importance for the growth and development of good crop stand and yield. In humans and animals, besides many non-specific functions, abnormal concentration of Mn damages the normal brain functioning as manganese is mainly related to neural activity and its deficiency can affect brain homeostasis.
There are several constraints in achieving the goal of producing manganese rich crop through conventional approaches of micronutrients application i.e. soil application or foliar spray as in the former case, the properties of applied Manganese salt and soil may not always match and require some extra practices like use of acidic fertilizer etc. in addition while the latter way is uneconomical.
Biofortification through seed priming is the simple short term, economical, easy and most effective method of mitigating the plant nutrients deficit and enrichment. Moreover, seed priming also ensure the nutrient availability even under stress conditions during plant growth and development. This method requires soaking the seeds in the nutrient containing solution (0.1 M MnSO4) for some time and then re-drying before sowing. Seed priming @ of 12g of M MnSO4 per litter of water, not only improved the crop stand establishment and crop growth rate but also caused significant improvement in grain weight, economic yield and biomass production hence appeared to be the most effective and economical way of Mn application for improving the grain yield and grain biofortification in wheat. Furthermore, the fact that this approach does not need any extra technicalities increases its practical significance over conventional methods.
Agronomicaly produced biofortified grains is a step in right direction that does not create new dependencies or displacement of regular feeding. Scientists involved in this approach are hopeful that the easy and economical attributes of producing biofortified wheat through seed priming will be helpful in reaching the farmers field in near future and helping to improve the diets of millions of people.