The production and promotion of nutrient rich foodstuffs to address the double burden of malnutrition.

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The United Nations have declared 2016 to 2025 as the decade of action to eradicate all forms of malnutrition worldwide; ensuring access to healthier and more sustainable diets for all, regardless of location and whoever they are. This brief also encompasses the double burden of malnutrition now facing most societies and characterised by the coexistence of undernutrition along with overweight, obesity or diet-related noncommunicable disease (NCDs). The proposed project "NUTRIFOOD" will improve the nutritional quality of diets in West Africa by identifying new nutritionally enhanced varieties of tomato, amaranth, cassava and yam; incorporating these fruits and vegetables and their derived products into the food systems will diversify the existing food basket and provide improved quality. The project will draw upon global resources and expertise, utilising unique germplasm. The tools and resources developed are generic in nature and although our focus will be Nigeria and Benin in West Africa the findings can be translated across other SSA countries and Low Medium Income countries globally. Fruit and vegetables are rich in provitamin A. One of our key performance indicators will be the provision of foodstuffs with the potential to reduce Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD). VAD is widespread in low-income countries and prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where 83% of children aged 2 to 5 years exhibit VAD. As a result of this malnutrition, 500,000 cases of blindness and 1.25 million deaths occur annually. With this aim, NUTRIFOOD will focus on high provitamin A fruits and vegetables as well as the high caloric staple crops cassava and yam biofortified with provitamin A and other nutrients The processing approaches used will potentially create storable products with improved nutrient uptake. As vitamin A is essential for well-being in the first 1000 days of life and the development of children, schools and households will be target in NUTRIFOOD. In Benin and Nigeria nutritional interventions in schools will be carried out. Potentially, these studies could contribute to the alleviation of VAD and improved cognitive development in infants. Modern communication technologies and approaches will be used to communicate the advantages of healthy diets and how to generate healthy diets in a cost-effective manner. The consortium will carried out a series of workshops to which multi-actors across the supply chain will be invited. With, scientists, NGO representatives, policy makers, parents (mothers) and civil organisations involved co-design approaches to the implementation of healthy diets will be attempted and promoted.