(NEWSER) – Vitamin A deficiency
kills hundreds of thousands of children worldwide; hundreds of thousands more
go blind, says a researcher. That's why his team has developed a "super
banana" it aims to grow in Uganda by 2020. Cooking bananas are an East
African staple, so Prof. James Dale and his team in Australia genetically
engineered a version of the food that's packed with alpha and beta carotene.
The body converts the two into vitamin A, AFP reports.
The super bananas are now being
sent to the US for their first human trials, which will take six weeks and are
backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Time notes; details of the
bananas' impact on vitamin A levels are expected to be released by year-end.
"We know our science will work," Dale says. If the bananas get the
green light in Uganda, the micronutrient-enriched crops could next be grown in
Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania. One big difference between regular bananas and the
super variety: The edible part of the latter is more orange than what we're
used to
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