Interview with Jan Low, 2016 World Food Prize Recipient and Emeritus Scientist, International Potato Center.
01 July 2026, Africa: When Jan Low, recipient of the World Food Prize, began championing biofortification with Maria Andrade, Robert Mwanga and Howarth Bouis over two decades ago, the idea was met with skepticism. Could staple crops really be bred to deliver more essential nutrients without sacrificing yield or farmer preferences? Today, after more than 25 years of research, evidence generation, and adoption, biofortification has become one of the main ways to combat global malnutrition.
Yet, according to Low, the need has never been greater.
Q: Why is biofortification more important than ever today?
Jan Low: Because the world is under real pressure now to combat hunger and poor diet quality. In 2024, about 32% of households globally couldn’t afford a diversified diet, and 67% of those households were located in Africa. That’s not a marginal issue: it’s widespread.
We are also witnessing multiple shocks at once. The fertilizer crisis is reducing productivity. Transport systems are strained. Food is becoming more expensive and less accessible.
Climate change is also affecting nutrient density, which declines under rising temperatures in many crops. We may be eating the same crops, but they are becoming less nutritious.
This is not only an African issue. It is everywhere. Micronutrient deficiencies are present globally, especially for iron. In many developing countries, 40–60% of caloric intake still comes from staple foods, so the higher quality they can be, the better.
In this context, biofortification is not a niche intervention; it must be a global priority.
Q: How does biofortification work in practice?
Jan Low: Biofortification is meant to fight micronutrient malnutrition, or hidden hunger: the lack of essential vitamins and minerals that severely impacts health, while at the same time providing calories that give people the energy they need.
One might think that promoting consumption of more meat or eggs would solve the problem, but this is not realistic for poor households who can’t afford to buy them on a regular basis.
The reality is that in most developing countries, both poor and wealthy people rely heavily on staple crops. That’s why staples are so powerful: they are what people already eat every day. They become the entry point for improved nutrition while we continue to push for more diversified, affordable diets.
At its core, biofortification is about making existing food systems healthier at a reasonable cost.
But there is a critical condition: crops must also perform. They must yield as well as, or better than, the local varieties farmers already trust. Nutritional characteristics alone are not enough to foster adoption. Drought tolerance, disease resistance, and adaptation to local conditions are also needed. That is why sustained support for breeding programs is so critical.
What has changed in recent years is speed. We have reduced the time needed to develop a new biofortified sweetpotato variety from around eight years to four to five – so-called accelerated breeding . This is still conventional breeding, but we test across more sites with diverse conditions earlier in the breeding cycle, using new techniques, and responding faster to climate pressures and engaging with farmers to get their input.
I always come back to this shift in thinking: we are no longer just feeding populations. We are nourishing them.
And biofortification is only one part of a broader solution.
Q: What are the other parts? Can crops replace vitamin pills on their own?
Jan Low: No. They are complementary, not substitutes.
There are four essential pillars in addressing malnutrition. Biofortification is one of them. Industrial fortification, where nutrients are added to processed foods like oil or sugar, is another one. Dietary diversity, especially through vegetables and animal source food access, is also needed. And the fourth pillar is supplementation, like vitamin A supplements.
Such supplementation is extremely effective during early childhood. It saves lives. But often parents do not take children to clinics on a regular basis after the first year of vaccinations, leaving many children without protection.
That’s where food-based solutions become essential again.
I often say: food is medicine. But it only works if all four approaches work together.
Q: What role does education and dissemination play in this work?
Jan Low: A huge one: you cannot separate science from people.
Many people don’t even know they are micronutrient deficient. Hidden hunger is exactly that: hidden. You don’t feel it immediately. You only discover it when you go to the clinic and have your blood and other examinations, sometimes after damage has been done.
So, we have to bring awareness much earlier.
One of the most promising pathways is school feeding programs. Many governments across Africa are investing in them, and the logic is strong: budgets per child are often very small, so staples are the cheapest and most reliable food group.
That is where biofortified crops can have a huge impact.
For example, just 100 grams of orange-fleshed sweetpotato added to a child’s porridge can meet their daily vitamin A needs.
The beauty of school feeding programs is that they create a virtuous cycle. Children are exposed early to nutritious food, farmers get a stable market, and local supply chains are strengthened.
It becomes a win for everyone.
Q: How did biofortification begin as a global movement?
Jan Low: It started in CGIAR in 1994 under the leadership of Howarth Bouis at the International Food Policy Research Institute at a meeting convened to bring breeders and nutritionists and agronomists together to debate the feasibility. Researchers first asked: can we even breed nutrition into crops without losing yield? After years of initial work proving it was possible, including efforts started by the International Potato Center on orange-fleshed, biofortified sweetpotato, the the HarvestPlus “biofortification” program was initiated within CGIAR in 2003. The idea itself goes back to the mid-1990s, when in the beginning, many believed it would not work.
So, we had to build evidence step by step, measuring blood levels, vitamin A status, and real human impact, using orange-fleshed sweetpotato as the first biofortified crop we worked on at scale.
In Africa, people prefer sweetpotato with a drier, firmer texture. Imported varieties from other continents were seen as too watery.
We had to breed over many generations to combine two things: high beta-carotene content and the mealy texture people actually want to eat.
That took time. And it required listening to farmers and end-consumers.
Because if parents don’t like the taste, they won’t grow it. And if they don’t grow it and give it to their children, it doesn’t matter how nutritious a new variety is.
We also learned that seed systems are everything. Sweetpotato is vegetatively propagated, so farmers can reuse planting material. So, you need to create a network of trained vine multipliers and community systems to maintain seed quality.
Without that, even the best variety doesn’t reach people.
HarvestPlus coordinated work on many other biofortified crops as well as with the CGIAR Centres and their national partners that bred them, including high zinc wheat, high iron maize, high iron beans, high iron pearl millet and high vitamin A maize and cassava.
It took time to agree on what “biofortified” means, and to prove it could work. It really is a 25-year journey. Not something that happens overnight.
Today, CGIAR biofortification portfolio includes over 400 varieties across 12 crops in 41 countries.
Q: What does the future of biofortification look like?
Jan Low: CGIAR is now entering biofortification 2.0: a forward-looking strategy anchored in farmer and consumer needs. We’re starting from them, understanding their needs and working backwards through the food system.
Across CGIAR Science Programs and Accelerators, prioritization is stronger: we consolidate existing gains, make sharper crop–nutrient country-targeting; strengthen work on bioavailability and nutrient retention; and tirelessly improve delivery pathways from breeding pipelines to consumers.
Earlier this month, CGIAR launched a Biofortification Coordination Team1, a cross-Program mechanism designed to strengthen alignment and accelerate impact through this strategy.
And honestly, it comes from a place of urgency.
It is heartbreaking to see hunger and micronutrient malnutrition increasing today, because we already know the solutions. So many of our problems are human made.
If we lose investment in research, we’ll lose the breeding lines, and decades of work. Once they’re gone, you cannot simply restart from scratch.
That is why we must keep breeding pipelines alive and fully integrate and mainstream nutrition into breeding programs.
We also need to remember something simple: agriculture takes time. People often forget where food comes from. But if you miss the planting season, you can lose a year.
So, leadership matters. Investment matters. And above all, continuity matters.
Because the tools exist. What we need now is the commitment to keep using them.
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