WASHINGTON - Scientists have found a way to increase the protein, zinc and iron content in wheat, an achievement that could help bring more nutritious food to millions of people worldwide.
A team led by University of California at Davis researcher Jorge Dubcovsky identified a gene in wildwheat that raises the grain's nutritional content. The gene became nonfunctional during humankind's domestication of wheat.
Writing in the latest Science journal, the researchers said they used conventional breeding methods to bring the gene into cultivated wheat varieties, enhancing the protein, zinc and iron value in the grain. The plant involved is known as wild emmer wheat, an ancestor of some cultivated wheat.
Wheat provides about 20 per cent of all calories consumed worldwide. The World Health Organisation has said upward of 2 billion people get too little zinc and iron in their diet and more than 160 million children under five lack adequate protein.
"We can produce wheat with more protein, zinc and iron," Dubcovsky said. "So if that is grown in a developing country or is used as food aid, it will provide more of those needed things in places where it's necessary."
In making the wheat more nutritious, the researchers did not change how it tasted. The gene also made the grain mature more quickly while also boosting its protein and micro-nutrient content by 10-15 per cent in the pasta and bread wheat varieties with which the researchers worked. "What this gene does is it uses better what is in the plant already, so rather than leave the protein and the zinc and iron in the straw, we've moved a little bit more into the grain," Dubcovsky said.
