Biofortification of Maize: A Promising Approach for Better Nutrition

Maize is a vital staple food crop that contributes significantly to global food security. However, it lacks some key vitamins (like vitamin A), minerals (including Fe, Zn, Mn, Se, and I), and essential amino acids (such as lysine and tryptophan). Biofortification is one of the most efficient, economical, and sustainable approach to improving micronutrient levels in crop plants to feed the eight billion world population by 2030. Over the past three decades, a great deal of research has been done to generate maize cultivars that are biofortified with minerals, provitamin A, and quality protein maize (QPM). Here we briefly describe the micronutrient deficiency in maize, the importance of crop biofortification, summarize the development of QPM cultivars that possess the double quantity of lysine and tryptophan, the development of Fe and Zn enriched cultivars and low-phytate maize cultivars to increase the Fe bioavailability through conventional breeding and biotechnological approaches, and the major challenges after the development of micronutrient-rich maize cultivars.