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With research staff from more than 60 countries, and offices across the globe, IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries.

researcher spotlight

Kalyani Raghunathan

Kalyani Raghunathan is Research Fellow in the Poverty, Gender, and Inclusion Unit, based in New Delhi, India. Her research lies at the intersection of agriculture, gender, social protection, and public health and nutrition, with a specific focus on South Asia and Africa. 

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Where we work

IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 80 countries with a wide range of local, national, and international partners.

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experts

Innovation Policy and Scaling

Victor Taleon

Research Fellow

Bio

Victor Taleon is a Research Fellow with the Innovation Policy and Scaling Unit, and is based at IFPRI-Washington, DC.

HarvestPlus

Innovation Policy and Scaling

Publications

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Book Chapter

Plant-source foods: Leveraging crops for nutrition and healthy diets

2024Boy, Erick; Brouwer, Inge D.; Foley, Jen; Palacios, Natalia; Scott, Samuel P.; Taleon, Victor
Details

Plant-source foods: Leveraging crops for nutrition and healthy diets

Addressing the urgent need for food systems to support sustainable healthy diets will require a major improvement in the availability of and access to affordable, nutritious foods such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in low- and middle-income countries, along with increased consumer demand for healthy diets. Plant-source foods are key components of sustainable healthy diets. This chapter examines food crops that could be leveraged to improve health outcomes, describes production systems and their role in providing populations access to highly nutritious crops, and presents examples of evidence-based technologies that improve the nutritional content of crops, especially for vulnerable populations.

Year published

2024

Authors

Boy, Erick; Brouwer, Inge D.; Foley, Jen; Palacios, Natalia; Scott, Samuel P.; Taleon, Victor

Citation

Boy, Erick; Brouwer, Inge D.; Foley, Jennifer; Palacios, Natalia; Scott, Samuel P.; and Taleon, Victor. 2024. Plant-source foods: Leveraging crops for nutrition and healthy diets. In Global food policy report 2024: Food systems for healthy diets and nutrition. Chapter 6, Pp. 54-61. Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/141888

Keywords

Nutrition; Healthy Diets; Food Crops; Food Consumption; Biofortification; Food Processing

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Source

Source record

Record type

Book Chapter

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Journal Article

Rural Bangladeshi consumers’ (un)willingness to pay for low-milled rice: Implications for zinc biofortification

2023Herrington, Caitlin L.; Maredia, Mywish K.; Ortega, David L.; Taleon, Victor; Birol, Ekin; Sarkar, Md Abdur Rouf; Rahaman, Md Shajedur
Details

Rural Bangladeshi consumers’ (un)willingness to pay for low-milled rice: Implications for zinc biofortification

Zinc deficiency is a severe public health problem in Bangladesh. We examine the effects of nutritional information on rural consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for two ways to increase zinc intake through rice, the main staple crop–low-milling that gives rice grains a distinctive light brown color (a visible trait) and sets it apart from the culturally preferred high-milled white rice grain and biofortification of rice with increased zinc content (an invisible trait), which is also low-milled to retain maximum zinc content. Results of our economic experiments suggest that with nutritional information, consumers are willing to pay a premium of 4.6% for zinc biofortified rice compared to non-biofortified rice, when milled at the same level. However, results confirm the strong preference for high-milled rice by Bangladeshi consumers who discounted low-milled rice by 8%–10% even after receiving information on the nutritional benefits of biofortified or low-milled rice. We find that consumers’ WTP for the two high-zinc-low-milled rice types (biofortified and non-biofortified) is positively correlated with being a female, more educated, belonging to households engaged in non-farm activities and with children under 5 years of age. Results point to the importance of nutritional awareness campaigns for increasing zinc biofortified and low-milled rice consumption and guiding the targeting strategy for such campaigns. Given the consumer preference for high-milled rice, this study also points to the need for exploring the rice fortification strategy to address the challenge of malnutrition.

Year published

2023

Authors

Herrington, Caitlin L.; Maredia, Mywish K.; Ortega, David L.; Taleon, Victor; Birol, Ekin; Sarkar, Md Abdur Rouf; Rahaman, Md Shajedur

Citation

Herrington, Caitlin L.; Maredia, Mywish K.; Ortega, David L.; Taleon, Victor; Birol, Ekin; Sarkar, Md Abdur Rouf; and Rahaman, Md Shajedur. 2022. Rural Bangladeshi consumers’ (un)willingness to pay for low-milled rice: Implications for zinc biofortification. Agricultural Economics 54(1) 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12739

Country/Region

Bangladesh

Keywords

South-eastern Asia; Asia; Southern Asia; Biofortification; Consumer Behaviour; Trace Element Deficiencies; Milling; Rice; Willingness to Pay; Zinc

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12739 Source record

Project

Market Intelligence

Record type

Journal Article

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Opinion Piece

Editorial: Wheat biofortification to alleviate global malnutrition

2022Ibba, Maria Itria; Gupta, Om Prakash; Govindan, Velu; Johnson, Alexander A.T.; Brinch-Pedersen, Henrik; Nikolic, Miroslav; Taleon, Víctor
Details

Editorial: Wheat biofortification to alleviate global malnutrition

According to the latest FAO report on the state of food security and nutrition in the world (1), more than 720 million people faced hunger, and around 3 billion people did not have access to a healthy diet. All these problematics, exacerbated by the current COVID-19 crisis, led to an increase in the number of people affected by the so-called hidden hunger, caused by an inadequate intake of essential micronutrients (MNs) such as iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), selenium (Se) and provitamin A. Biofortification, intended as the improvement of the nutritional quality of food crops through either conventional breeding, agronomic practices or modern biotechnologies, represents a sustainable, cost-effective and long-term approach to alleviate micronutrient-deficiency. Staple crops are typically the major target of most biofortification studies, given their central role in human diet. Wheat, specifically, contributes to around 20% of the total energy and protein intake and to around 30% of the Fe and Zn intake worldwide. However, the current level of MNs present in most wheat-derived food products is not enough to meet the minimum daily intake, especially in the poorest regions of the world. For these reasons, continuing to work on wheat biofortification is fundamental to ensure the production of nutritious and sustainable food and to contribute to the reduction of MNs deficiency.

Year published

2022

Authors

Ibba, Maria Itria; Gupta, Om Prakash; Govindan, Velu; Johnson, Alexander A.T.; Brinch-Pedersen, Henrik; Nikolic, Miroslav; Taleon, Víctor

Citation

Ibba, Maria Itria; Gupta, Om Prakash; Govindan, Velu; Johnson, Alexander A. T.; Brinch-Pedersen, Henrik; Nikolic, Miroslav; and Taleon, Victor. 2022. Editorial: Wheat biofortification to alleviate global malnutrition. Frontiers in Nutrition 9: 1001443. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.1001443

Keywords

Biofortification; Food Crops; Agronomic Practices; Covid-19; Sustainability; Staple Foods; Hunger; Micronutrient Deficiencies; Retinol; Nutrition; Trace Elements; Selenium; Bioavailability; Food Security; Iron; Wheat; Zinc; Genome-wide Association Studies; Breeding

Language

English

Access/Licence

Open AccessCC-BY-4.0

Links

https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.1001443 Source record

Project

Agriculture for Nutrition and Health

Record type

Opinion Piece

Blogs

Global Food Policy Report 2024: Leveraging plant-source foods for sustainable healthy diets
IFPRI Blog
 | 
November 04, 2024

Global Food Policy Report 2024: Leveraging plant-source foods for sustainable healthy diets

By Erick Boy, Inge Brouwer, Jen Foley, Natalia Palacios, Samuel Scott, and Victor Taleon

Integrating more fruits, vegetables, and other high-quality crops into food systems.

Research-backed policy to eliminate miniket rice in Bangladesh will improve nutrition
IFPRI Blog
 | 
May 01, 2024

Research-backed policy to eliminate miniket rice in Bangladesh will improve nutrition

By Victor Taleon and Zakiul Hasan

Over-processing removes essential nutrients.

Research

Topics/Countries