Every mother knows what is best for her child—especially when it comes to putting the most nutritious food on the table. At HarvestPlus, we are working hard to help mothers around the world feed their children the most nutritious food possible through biofortified crops enriched with vitamin A, zinc, and iron. On Mother’s Day, we salute our partners–mothers around the world, from Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Consider the story of Harriet Okaka, a farmer and a mother in Uganda. Okaka started growing biofortified orange sweet potato when she learned that just one orange sweet potato a day provided growing children with the daily quota of vitamin A and also reduced both prevalence and duration of diarrhea in children. She first harvested orange sweet potato from her field only a few months before her son Abraham was born. Abraham is the youngest of her six children. She says, “Abraham is different from all other kids because he walked sooner, and I never had to take him to the health center other than for getting immunization shots.” She says it is all because she fed him orange sweet potato since he began eating solid food.

Mothers like Harriet Okaka are key to the adoption of vitamin A-rich orange sweet potato in Uganda. So are mothers in many countries where we are expanding efforts to mainstream more nutritious, conventionally bred, biofortified crops.

Watch HarvestPlus Director Howarth Bouis, who believes that biofortified crops empower mothers across the globe.