According to GenomeWeb and The Guardian, researchers from Australia are tweaking the genome of the banana in order to get it to deliver higher levels of vitamin A. The study is aimed to supplement vitamin A in Uganda and other similar population, where banana is one of the main food sources and deficiency in vitamin A cause blindness and death in children.The group of professor James Dale, from the Queensland University of Technology, received a $10 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support this 9 year project.
Dale said that by 2020 vitamin A-enriched banana varieties would be grown by farmers in Uganda, where about 70% of the population survive on the fruit.
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