Food and nutrition research

Around 925 million people globally face hunger and a further one billion are undernourished with insufficient access to vitamins and minerals. Children under five years of age are often the worst affected, with around 171 million being chronically malnourished because of long term exposure to a poor diet and repeated infections. More than one in 10 children are acutely malnourished and one third of all child deaths are linked to undernutrition.

We know how to reduce undernutrition by scaling up high impact health services, but the evidence on how to tackle the underlying causes of hunger is much less clear. Through funding and supporting innovative research we aim to address these critical gaps in knowledge.

Research is also needed to address the challenge of feeding an estimated world population of nine billion by 2050. Investment in agricultural research in developing countries represents good value for money. It has a high rate of return, for example every £1 spent by CGIAR produces £9 worth of additional benefits, such as increased yields for producers and lower food prices for consumers. It also empowers farming communities to grow resilient crops and prevent malnutrition.

Successful examples of DFID funded research projects in food and nutrition include:

• 24,000 families in Uganda and Mozambique have increased their intake of vitamin A through new strains of sweet potato. The Harvest Plus programme helped tackle malnutrition in an estimated 75,000 new households directly – and 225,000 households indirectly as families share their crops with neighbours.
• In South Asia the development of Scuba Rice - rice plants which become dormant if fully submerged in water – has helped farmers increase resilience to the effects of floods.  Scuba rice was developed by the International Research Rice Institute.
• The Smallholder Dairy Project (SDP) has paved the way for an estimated US$33 million in economy-wide benefits as a result of policy change in Kenya’s dairy Industry.  The SDP’s evidence-based research recognised the economic and nutritional significance of small scale milk vendors and the importance of incorporating them into Kenya’s dairy retail markets.
• Research into downy mildew resistant pearl millet led to a more reliable supply of food for an estimated two million people in the hottest and driest areas of India.  Research by DFID's Plant Science Research Programme and the Sustainable Agriculture Research for International Development initiative will examine plant genes under different conditions to develop tools for breeding increased drought tolerance in pearl millet and other staple crops.