{{Rwandan farmers are expected to benefit from a newly improved super banana variety that has been developed by Australian scientists.}}<\/p>\n
The New super banana variety is expected to be available in Africa including Rwanda by 2020.<\/p>\n
According to the Australian reseachers, a super-enriched banana genetically engineered to improve the lives of millions of people in Africa will soon have its first human trial, which will test its effect on vitamin A levels, Australian researchers said Monday.<\/p>\n
The project plans to have the special banana varieties — enriched with alpha and beta carotene which the body converts to vitamin A.<\/p>\n
The bananas are now being sent to the United States, and it is expected that the six-week trial measuring how well they lift vitamin A levels in humans will begin soon.<\/p>\n
“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,” said project leader Professor James Dale.<\/p>\n
The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) project, backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, hopes to see conclusive results by year end.<\/p>\n
“We know our science will work,” Professor Dale said.<\/p>\n
“We made all the constructs, the genes that went into bananas, and put them into bananas here at QUT.”<\/p>\n
Dale said the Highland or East African cooking banana was a staple food in East Africa, but had low levels of micro-nutrients, particularly pro-vitamin A and iron.<\/p>\n
“The consequences of vitamin A deficiency are dire with 650,000-700,000 children world-wide dying … each year and at least another 300,000 going blind,” he said.<\/p>\n
Researchers decided that enriching the staple food was the best way to help ease the problem.<\/p>\n
While the modified banana looks the same on the outside, inside the flesh is more orange than a cream colour, but Dale said he did not expect this to be a problem.<\/p>\n
He said once the genetically modified bananas were approved for commercial cultivation in Uganda, the same technology could potentially be expanded to crops in other countries — including Rwanda, parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Tanzania.<\/p>\n
“In West Africa farmers grow plantain bananas and the same technology could easily be transferred to that variety as well,” he said.<\/p>\n
AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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