You can’t see it, but it can change lives: the story of zinc-enriched wheat

By Velu Govindan, Principal Scientist, Wheat Breeder, Global Wheat Program, CIMMYT.

For decades, enriching staple crops with critical micronutrients was seen as a niche objective within plant breeding. Today, a shift is underway: wheat breeders across CGIAR, CIMMYT and national breeding programs are incorporating zinc enrichment directly into elite wheat breeding lines, changing how wheat breeding can help combat zinc deficiency.

Rather than treating zinc as an add-on trait, breeders are developing elite lines where zinc enrichment is already built in. This simple but major shift frees them to focus on other farmer- and consumer-prioritized traits like higher yields, pest and disease resistance, and resilience to climate change, while maintaining zinc enrichment targets.

This represents an important shift in breeding strategy, and a similar approach may be relevant for other staples, where breeding pipelines and nutrition targets allow.

Why zinc matters

Zinc is the second most abundant trace mineral in the human body after iron, but it must come from food. It plays a role in hundreds of vital processes, from gene expression and immune defence to hormone function and tissue repair. Deficiencies are particularly dangerous for children, and associated with stunted growth, cognitive delays, frequent infections, and impaired healing.

Among adults, zinc deficiency is now linked to cardiometabolic diseases and weakened immune systems. And while a balanced diet usually offers enough, many people in low-income regions lack access to zinc-rich foods like seafood, meat, or fortified products.

Globally, around two billion people are affected by zinc deficiency. In South Asia, the prevalence is as high as 30%. The global risk sits at 17%, with sub-Saharan Africa and Central America also identified as high-risk regions.

Biofortification, a scalable nutrition-sensitive strategy

The agricultural world calls it “hidden hunger”: a lack of essential micronutrients that does not show up in calorie intake but can severely affect health. A diverse, balanced diet remains the best way to prevent micronutrient deficiencies. However, where access to zinc-rich foods is limited, biofortification has the potential to be a cost-effective and scalable complement, provided that biofortified varieties are adopted by farmers and consumed by target populations. In these circumstances, their higher grain zinc content can contribute to increased dietary zinc intake, which may in turn help improve zinc status as part of a broader strategy to combat malnutrition.

In this broader strategy, biofortified crops complement supplementation, industrial fortification, and diet diversification by increasing the micronutrient content of widely consumed staple foods, with little or no change required in food preparation or consumption patterns.

In cereals like wheat, which account for 30–40% of daily caloric intake in many countries, increasing zinc levels in widely consumed grain may contribute meaningfully to dietary zinc intake, provided that improved varieties are adopted and affordable.

Breakthroughs in South Asia

The strategy is now being deployed. In Pakistan, a country where wheat consumption averages 130 kg per person per year, CGIAR and national scientists have released five zinc-enriched wheat varieties.

One standout is Akbar-19, which is now widely adopted in Pakistan, covering 50% of the country’s wheat cultivated area. It combines enhanced zinc content with high yield, lodging resistance, disease tolerance, and excellent chapati quality. Across India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, over two dozen high-zinc wheat varieties derived from CGIAR research have been released and adopted. Together, they cover more than 6 million hectares in South Asia, increasing access to zinc through a familiar staple food.  

In India, Ninga wheat is another one of the high yielding, climate-resilient, and biofortified wheat varieties; it features a grain zinc content that is approximately 30% higher, thereby contributing to both nutritional security and the productivity of Indian farmers.

Why mainstreaming is essential

Previously, zinc biofortification was managed as a separate breeding track. Now, CGIAR is integrating zinc, and other nutrient-rich traits directly into its elite breeding materials, a method known as mainstreaming. With zinc already in the breeding lines, scientists are free to focus on enhancing other traits demanded by smallholder farmers. This bundling of benefits is critical: zinc is invisible - you can’t see or taste it – and because of that, adoption depends on traits farmers value, including yield, disease resistance, and local adaptation.

The shift also opens the door for greater cross-crop innovation. The same mainstreaming strategy used in wheat is now being adapted in other crops, potentially amplifying the approach to other staple crop systems.  

Breeding for tomorrow’s climate

There’s added urgency. Studies show that rising CO₂ levels expected by 2050 in the atmosphere will likely reduce zinc concentrations in staple cereals. Mainstreaming zinc enrichment now is a proactive strategy that may help protect zinc density in future cereal varieties.

Encouragingly, CIMMYT wheat programs have increased both grain yield and zinc content by 2% per year over the last five years through the zinc mainstreaming efforts- a combined 10% gain that shows what’s possible when nutrition and agronomy go hand-in-hand.

A hidden trait with visible impact

Biofortification is moving from the margins to the mainstream of crop breeding¹. It’s no longer just about just yield or resilience, but all of this at once.  

With global diets under threat from climate change, mainstreaming zinc in breeding pipelines offers a scalable strategy to increase the zinc content of widely consumed wheat, with the potential to improve dietary zinc intake where biofortified varieties are adopted and consumed. By building zinc into the foundation of tomorrow’s crops, CGIAR and its partners are contributing to the fight against hidden hunger worldwide.

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Coordinating the strategy across CGIAR:

¹This biofortification strategy is further pursued by a Biofortification Coordination Team (BCT), a CGIAR cross-Program mechanism designed to strengthen alignment and accelerate impact. This follows the 2025 Next Phase in Biofortification consultation, which set the direction for Biofortification 2.0 and emphasized consumer-driven, food-system-wide approaches. The BCT coordinates priorities and actions across the following CGIAR Science Programs: Breeding for Tomorrow, Better Diets and Nutrition, Sustainable Farming, Scaling for Impact, and Policy Innovation.

Main image: Global Wheat Program, Mexico, CIMMYT (Photo: Velu Govindan). Written by Velu Govindan, CIMMYT with Julie Puech, Breeding for Tomorrow. Reviewed and ajusted with inputs from Mercy Lungaho, Biofortified and Health Enhancing Staples Lead, Better Diets and Nutrition, and Scaling for Impact.