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. 2022 Dec 9:13:1055278.
doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.1055278. eCollection 2022.

Agronomic biofortification of food crops: An emerging opportunity for global food and nutritional security

Ajay Kumar Bhardwaj  1 , Sukirtee Chejara  1 , Kapil Malik  1 , Raj Kumar  1 , Ashwani Kumar  1 , Rajender Kumar Yadav  1
Affiliations

Agronomic biofortification of food crops: An emerging opportunity for global food and nutritional security

Ajay Kumar Bhardwaj et al. Front Plant Sci. .

Abstract

Fortification of food with mineral micronutrients and micronutrient supplementation occupied the center stage during the two-year-long Corona Pandemic, highlighting the urgent need to focus on micronutrition. Focus has also been intensified on the biofortification (natural assimilation) of mineral micronutrients into food crops using various techniques like agronomic, genetic, or transgenic. Agronomic biofortification is a time-tested method and has been found useful in the fortification of several nutrients in several crops, yet the nutrient use and uptake efficiency of crops has been noted to vary due to different growing conditions like soil type, crop management, fertilizer type, etc. Agronomic biofortification can be an important tool in achieving nutritional security and its importance has recently increased because of climate change related issues, and pandemics such as COVID-19. The introduction of high specialty fertilizers like nano-fertilizers, chelated fertilizers, and water-soluble fertilizers that have high nutrient uptake efficiency and better nutrient translocation to the consumable parts of a crop plant has further improved the effectiveness of agronomic biofortification. Several new agronomic biofortification techniques like nutripriming, foliar application, soilless activation, and mechanized application techniques have further increased the relevance of agronomic biofortification. These new technological advances, along with an increased realization of mineral micronutrient nutrition have reinforced the relevance of agronomic biofortification for global food and nutritional security. The review highlights the advances made in the field of agronomic biofortification via the improved new fertilizer forms, and the emerging techniques that achieve better micronutrient use efficiency of crop plants.

Keywords: biofortification; food and nutritional security (FNS); malnutrition; micronutrient; nanofertilizers.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Influence of mineral micronutrient biofortification on the plant physiological processes and its relation to human health and immunity.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Conventional and advanced biofortification techniques used in crop production and improvement programs.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Application techniques used for agronomic biofortification of crops.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Advancements in fertilizer forms to increase the efficiency and relevance of agronomic biofortification.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Agronomic, soil, fertilizer, and crop management based interventions to enhance the success of agronomic biofortification.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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