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Bill Folk, left, and Quinton Johnson, director of the South
African Herbal Sciences and Medicine Institute, are working
together to fight malnutrition in Africa by improving the
nutritional value of sorghum. Photo courtesy of MU Health
Care
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Fighting
Malnutrition
in Africa
By Christian Basi
Each day, hundreds of millions of people suffer
with disease, blindness and other problems associated with malnutrition.
Now, one University of Missouri-Columbia researcher has joined
an international consortium in an effort to improve the nutritional
value of one of the staples of the African diet, sorghum, as one
way to combat this problem.
Bill
Folk, professor of biochemistry
and senior associate dean for research in the MU
School of Medicine, is collaborating with researchers from
Africa and Pioneer Hybrid/Dupont
in the Africa Harvest Biotech
Foundation International consortium to improve the nutritional
value of sorghum, which includes increasing essential amino acids,
vitamins A and E, iron, and zinc.
“Sorghum is widely consumed in Africa,
but lacks some of the essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals
required for optimal nutrition,” Folk said. “Our research
at Mizzou has focused on developing approaches to increasing the
content of these essential amino acids, such as lysine and tryptophan.”
The human body can make optimal use of dietary
proteins, which are made of amino aids, if the proteins contain
the right proportion of amino acids. If one particular amino acid
is lacking or deficient in the food source, which is the case
for sorghum and corn, the human body cannot metabolize the entire
protein for nutrition.
“It's like trying to make a dress and
having all the necessary fabric and buttons, but not having enough
thread,” Folk said. “If you don't have enough thread,
you can't make a complete dress and some of the fabric and buttons
will have to be thrown away at the end. If you don't have the
right amount of amino acids, that extra nutrition cannot be fully
used. We want to provide a better diet and improve human welfare
in one of the most stressed areas of the world.”
The USDA
and MU's
Food for the 21st Century program have supported this research
at MU for the past 15 years. Without the expertise of the researchers
and scientists, MU would not be positioned to take this next step,
Folk said.
Funding from the Grand
Challenges in Global Health initiative to the Africa Harvest
Biotech Foundation International will now enable development of
African bio-fortified sorghum. The Grand Challenges initiative — funded
by the Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome
Trust, and the Canadian
Institutes of Health Research — is a major international effort
to achieve scientific breakthroughs against health problems that
kill millions of people each year in developing countries.
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Last Update:
March 12, 2007
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