LIANG Long, BRADLEY G. Ridoutt, XIE Bin, ZHANG Sasa, AWEKEY M. Gelaw, MENG Weiting, WANG Liyuan, GUO Yanbin, ZHAO Guishen
There are an estimated 2 billion people suffered from the hidden hunger (HH) with a diet lacking adequate intake of vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients. Improving the nutritional quality of food produced and consumed is therefore an important global priority to improve human health and wellbeing, especially for children, women and families in low-income countries where the HH is prevalent. In China, around 300 million people suffer from the HH, and in this paper, the concept of functional foods is proposed and a new strategy, known as the functional agriculture (FA) is developed to combat the HH. This new approach is now officially accepted by the Chinese government with the emergence of a FA industry. Traditional approaches to combat the HH include the food supplementation, the industrial fortification during the food processing, and the promotion of the dietary diversification. The FA, on the other hand, involves the enhancement of the food nutritional quality through improved agronomic practices, plant breeding, biotechnology and other forms of biofortification in the food system. Already there is evidence that the biofortification of crops can be effective in reducing the HH. Ongoing technology development and institutional improvement are seen as the key actions needed to realize the full potential of the FA. The former includes the developments in genetic engineering, agricultural microbiology, biofortification of feeding for livestock, new processing technology, as well as monitoring and evaluation technology. The latter includes the logistics management as well as the new developments in financing, enterprise development and strengthening of research institutions. The FA is expected to play an important role in combating the HH in China and through the "One Belt One Road" initiative to have a wider impact throughout the world.
