Fortunately, banana varieties naturally rich in provitamin A have long existed elsewhere, and Dale knew where. Yet, as with other foods, local bananas have never provided enough provitamin A for a healthy diet. Locals eat them steamed with a pinch of salt, smashed into chicken stew, fried, barbecued, boiled, brewed into wine, distilled into alcohol, or simply peeled for a sweet afternoon snack. Nearly every farm and home garden grows multiple banana plants. Not only are they piled high in open-air markets they fill the shelves of all kinds of stores, whether a barbershop, a CD reseller, or an internet café. (By comparison, the average American consumes about 27 pounds of bananas yearly.) No other food crop has a comparable reach-and in Uganda, bananas are found virtually everywhere. ![]() The average Ugandan eats about 880 pounds a year. But those foods are not consumed in large enough amounts to make a meaningful difference.īananas, a main staple of the Ugandan diet, seemed a better option. Fortifying maize and wheat flour and edible oils with vitamin A to boost nutritional values proved more effective. Distribution of vitamin A capsules, for example, worked well in urban areas but failed to reach those most in need in rural areas. The Ugandan government has tried for decades to solve the problem-with limited success. His dream, he told me when I visited his lab last year, is that the new banana “gets accepted, especially in the rural areas.” A cultural icon to the rescue ( One solution to child malnutrition may lie in kids' guts.) The experience, he tells audiences, remains seared into his memory. Although his parents were able to get him treated at a local missionary hospital, other children in the village were not so lucky Tushemereirwe attended his first funeral at age 10. He grew up in the 1960s in a rural village where malnutrition was prevalent, and he fell sick many times. Tushemereirwe experienced this firsthand. In Africa alone, the “silent hunger” of rampant malnutrition is to blame for 6 percent of early childhood deaths, and in Uganda, one of the world’s poorest countries, it remains high on the list of health risks. It also inhibits kids’ growth and so weakens their resistance to illness that many die from treatable diseases such as diarrhea and measles. It is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children. The World Health Organization estimates that 190 million preschool children suffer from vitamin A deficiency today, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Yet it remains a serious global public health problem. Treatment for vitamin A deficiency has existed for a century, and the ailment has all but disappeared from wealthy nations. Legislation to regulate and promote development of GMOs has been in the works in the Ugandan Parliament since the early 2000s but has not yet been signed into law. One hurdle remains: gaining government approval in the face of vocal opposition to genetically modified crops. Wilberforce was 44 in 2005, when work began on Banana21, as the project is known, and is 65 today. The breakthrough is the result of a partnership of the lab in Kawanda, where Tushemereirwe serves as director, James Dale, an Australian agricultural scientist and banana expert, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which invested $11 million in one of the longest running research projects the foundation has ever undertaken. ( Fruits and vegetables are less nutritious than they used to be.) But fortifying bananas to deliver nutrients to humans who eat them is a first. Scientists have long crossbred banana plants to improve resistance to pests, fungus, or drought. ![]() This “super banana” was created at Uganda's National Agricultural Research Laboratories (NARL) for the noblest of causes: to save the lives of thousands of children who die in Uganda every year from vitamin A deficiency. It contains so much provitamin A, a substance that transforms into vitamin A in the body, that its flesh has a distinctive orange tint. KAWANDA, UgandaWilberforce Tushemereirwe holds up a genetically modified banana that took millions of dollars and 20 years to make.
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