Perspective
Nutrition, Education and Development.

What do we mean by 'developing' countries. We could say those countries that are able to use science and technology to improve the well-being of their people. But what is the key to this happening? As traditional Confucianists, we would say the key is successful education. But for good education you not only need a good curriculum you need to have children who are mentally and physically healthy enough to learn. And here we see vegetables playing a vital role in nutrition, and thereby in education and, ultimately, in national development.

There are basically four major forms of malnutrition that limit the capacity to learn: calorie malnutrition, vitamin A deficiency and deficiencies of iron and iodine. We believe that we can make legumes richer in protein and therefore a more valuable supplement to cereal based diets; we can make vegetables a better source of vitamin A; and we can make vegetables a self-enhancer for better availability of iron. Most of AVRDC's research is designed to achieve these goals.

However, nutrition in itself is not a strong incentive for people to produce more and eat more vegetables. The incentives come from making vegetables more economically accessible and attractive in terms of quality. Then we can make vegetables a basis for the growth of nations.

Availability of fresh vegetables is limited by seasons for optimum growth. In very hot and very wet seasons few vegetables grow well and so availability is reduced, prices are high and people on low income cannot afford them. For the last 28 years AVRDC has focused on developing tropical adaptations in many vegetables so that they can be grown under less favourable conditions such as high temperature and rainfall. This work has included breeding more stress tolerant varieties and also developing techniques such as grafting tomatoes on to aubergine rootstock in order to better withstand waterlogging.

Nutritionally we have developed tomatoes high in beta-carotene as a source of vitamin A and we have worked with citric acid and ascorbic acid to enhance availability and absorption of iron in foods. For instance, mung bean is rich in iron but normally most of the iron is not digestible. However, when mung bean is cooked with tomato, which is high in ascorbic acid, the iron in mung beans becomes biologically available for human digestion. But then mung bean itself must be made more accessible to people on low incomes. One way of doing this is to make mung beans easier to grow and therefore cheaper in the market place and so AVRDC has bred short duration mung bean (70 days) and we are hoping to triple the yield of traditional varieties. We have also been working to develop mung beans that are resistant to Yellow Mosaic Virus (MYMV) which is a major problem in some parts of south Asia. Resistant varieties have now been introduced to Pakistan and mung bean production has recovered there. This has so impressed donors that UK's DFID and USAID have funded our regional network for mung bean in south Asia.

In Africa our vegetable research is focused through the regional programmes and at present they are concentrated in the southern countries of the SADC region. But we are conscious of the need to strengthen national programmes in Africa and in Central America where, in many cases, research and development work on vegetables is often inadequate or non-existent.

Looking to the future we know that we must focus our limited resources and direct them to where need is greatest. How can we better serve the increasing number of large conurbations that are mushrooming in the developing countries? How can we encourage intensification of production without allowing soils to deteriorate? One way in which we hope to contribute to meeting this challenge is to develop slow-release fertilizers for vegetables so that absorption is increased and run-off and leaching of nutrients are reduced. We shall further develop Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and we hope that our efforts will also lead to employment in the service sectors downstream from vegetable production. We shall continue to work in partnership with non-governmental organizations, as well as our traditional partners the National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS).

We consider the provision of nutrition and income our prime focus but we are broadening our considerations and our partnerships and I feel we have a unique role to play.

AVRDC - Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center

DFID - Department for International Development

USAID - United States Agency of International Development

SADC - Southern African Development Community

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