Breeding new bananas to save hundreds of thousands of children worldwide

Why does science lose its work to create the most idyllic fruit in the world? Simply because millions of people will be saved.

Recently, experts at Queensland University of Technology (Australia) have created a new banana variety, called "golden banana" - or yellow banana . According to researcher Professor James Dale, experts have struggled to create it and this is a very important invention.

But why is it hard to create bananas - something so simple? The cause of this originates from Uganda, a country . with too many bananas. Here, bananas are a staple food, and they almost eat every dish made from bananas.

New yellow banana variety.

Basically, bananas contain lots of sugar and many nutrients, but the levels of trace elements are quite low, especially iron and pro-vitamin A. If you only eat bananas, vitamin A deficiency is inevitable.

Every year, about 650,000 - 700,000 children worldwide die from a lack of pro-vitamin A, and several hundred thousand children are permanently blind. In addition, lighter cases also leave a small impact, such as growth retardation, infertility, dry skin .

Pro-vitamin A deficiency can cause blindness.

However, the new banana will solve it all. By using genetic modification technology, the result of 12 years of research at the University of Queensland is a banana with very high pro-vitamin A content.

"We use a gene from Papua New Guinea's banana - the banana has a very high pro-vitamin A content, but the chamber - then put in Cavendish bananas in Uganda," said Professor Dale.

"After many years, we have successfully developed a banana for extremely high levels of pro-vitamin A, orange-yellow when ripe, instead of normal gold."

Ripe bananas will be orange-yellow, instead of pale yellow like regular bananas.

The team tested hundreds of different gene sequences before creating the last "golden banana" version in Uganda. Under the plan, they hope that farmers in Uganda will completely replace local bananas with this new banana in 2021.

"This research is an important milestone, as we have a mission to bring more nutritious food sources to the African community," - Professor shared.

The study is published in Plant Biotechnology.