QUALITY ASSURANCE FINDINGS

Quality assurance (QA) systems and regulations are necessary for biofortified crops to protect the consumer from fraud, simplify trade, as well as to ensure that the target populations receive nutritionally effective levels of micronutrients. In order to ensure that biofortified crops ultimately deliver the intended nutritional and health outcomes once consumed, QA and regulatory systems are required in various stages of the supply chain for different biofortified crops. For example, Provitamin A products are very unstable to temperature or heat, air, and light, as well as reducing its beta carotene with time, which requires special processing and handling to ensure retention of the nutrients. HIB has hidden traits; hence it cannot differentiate with conventional ones, posing a significant risk of guaranteeing its nutritional contents along the value chains. Therefore, QA are necessary to monitors the supply chains of biofortified crops to ensure that levels of micronutrients are consistently at intended levels, to prohibit the addition of nutrients to crops where it is nutritionally unnecessary, and to ensure that biofortified foods derived from biofortified crops have the intended nutritional composition and value.