Genetically Tweaked Banana from Australia to Help Africa Fight Vitamin A Deficiency

The world's first pro-vitamin A-enriched banana is expected to undergo human trials in the U.S. The banana is genetically engineered to raise levels of vitamin A in people living in several African nations.

The Highland or East African cooking banana is a staple food of many East African nations, but is deficient in micronutrients such as iron and vitamin A. The lack of vitamin A in diet has led to 300,000 children worldwide going blind and another 650,000-700,000 children dying from pro-vitamin A-related deficiency.

The super banana, developed at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), is supported by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Vitamin A is essential for vision health, immune system and reproduction.

The engineered bananas are on their way to the U.S for the world's first human trial. The studies will last six weeks and the results are expected to be announced by the end of this year.

If successful, the fortified banana could help people in Africa fight vitamin A deficiency.

"Good science can make a massive difference here by enriching staple crops such as Ugandan bananas with pro-vitamin A and providing poor and subsistence-farming populations with nutritionally rewarding food," James Dale, one of the study researchers, said in a news release.

Researchers are trying to raise the pro vitamin A levels to 20 micrograms per gram dry weight.

"We know our science will work," Professor Dale said in a news release."We made all the constructs, the genes that went into bananas, and put them into bananas here at QUT. Hundreds of different permutations went into field trials up north and we tested everything to make sure our science worked here in Queensland. Now the really high-performing genes have been taken to Uganda and have been put into field trials there."

According to the researchers, with support from the Ugandan government, the new versions of bananas could be commercially available by as early as 2020. In the future, other countries such as Rwanda, parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Tanzania are expected to follow Ugandan policy on genetically modified crops and adopt the new banana variety.