Crop plants provide essential food nutrients to humans and livestock, including carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, minerals and vitamins, directly or indirectly. The level and composition of food nutrients vary significantly in different food crops. As a result, plant foods are often deficient in certain nutrient components. Relying on a single food crop as source of nutrients thus will not achie...

Food allergies are a major health concern in industrialized countries.Reduction of allergens in foods, either by food processing or genetic engineering are strategies to minimize the risk of adverse reactions for food allergic patients.Biotechnological approaches can use for the reduction of allergens in plant foods. Because food allergens can be life threathening, a variety of strategies to ab...

Aquaculture is the fastest growing food sector and continues to expand alongside terrestrial crop and livestock production. Using portfolio theory as a conceptual framework, we explore how current interconnections between the aquaculture, crop, livestock, and fisheries sectors act as an impediment to, or an opportunity for, enhanced resilience in the global food system given increased resource ...

he introduction of GM foods has led to the evolution of a food safety assessment paradigm that establishes safety of the GM food relative to its conventional counterpart. The GM foods currently approved and marketed in several countries have undergone extensive safety testing under a structured safety assessment framework evolved by international organizations like FAO, WHO, Codex and OECD. The...

International research efforts, including those funded by HarvestPlus, a Challenge Program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), are focusing on conventional plant breeding to biofortify staple crops such as maize, rice, cassava, beans, wheat, sweet potatoes, and pearl millet to increase the concentrations of micronutrients that are commonly deficient in spec...

The preponderance of food and fiber for human consumption is derived from plants. The ability to domesticate crop plants was a pivotal point in human evolution. It permitted the transition from a predominantly nomadic lifestyle to one of more centralized communities of towns and villages. In turn, this allowed for stratification in the community for specialized activities not directly related t...

European resistance to GM crops — the result of one of the most highly effective environmental campaigns and ongoing worries about environmental damage — is set to be challenged by soaring food prices and a new enthusiasm on the part of farmers. A new study finds European farmers who grow genetically modified crops enjoy higher yields and revenues than conventional growers. A team from the Join...

Biofortification is an upcoming, promising, cost-effective, and sustainable technique of delivering micronutrients to a population that has limited access to diverse diets and other micronutrient interventions. Unfortunately, major food crops are poor sources of micronutrients required for normal human growth. The manuscript deals in all aspects of crop biofortification which includes-breeding,...

Pharmaceutical crops is an ambiguous term used by biologists and chemists for different categories of plants. This review focuses on the definition and scope of pharmaceutical crops. We define pharmaceutical crops as those cultivated species that are used for extraction or preparation of therapeutic substances such as active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), excipients used in pharmaceutical f...

It is evident from many recent analyses that the world’s population will increase significantly in the near future. As a result, the demand for healthy, affordable food will also grow. Given that the area of available arable land required to produce food will not expand, new and environmentally sound technologies allowing farmers to produce more on the same amount of land must be developed. The...