The $250,000 World Food Prize, sometimes called the Nobel of agriculture, was awarded to four scientists for development and promotion of biofortified crops, bred to include vitamins and micronutrients. An estimated 10 million people in Africa, Asia and Latin America already have better diets due to the improved staple crops, “with a potential of several hundred million more in the coming decades,” said the prize foundation.
Three of the laureates, Maria Andrade, Robert Mwanga and Jan Low, of the International Potato Center, were honored for development of the Vitamin A-enriched orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP), which the World Food Prize Foundation called “the single most successful example of biofortification.” Andrade and Mwanga bred the plant. Low designed the nutrition studies that convinced nearly 2 million households in 10 African countries to plant, purchase and eat the nutritionally enhanced sweet potato.
The fourth laureate, Howard Bouis, of the International Food Policy Research Institute, pioneered a multi-institutional approach for biofortification as a global plant-breeding strategy, said the foundation. “As a result of his leadership, crops such as iron- and zinc-fortified beans, rice, wheat and pearl millet, along with Vitamin A-enriched cassava, maize and OFSP are being tested or released in over 40 countries.”
The International Potato Center and IFPRI are part of CGIAR, a global network of agriculture and food research centers.
Wheat breeder Norman Borlaug, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to avert world hunger, created the World Food Prize in 1986 to recognize people who increased the quality, quantity or availability of food worldwide. This year’s prize will be formally awarded on Oct. 13 during a three-day symposium on food issues in Des Moines.
Biographies of the laureates and descriptions of their work are available here.