๐ Tender Overview
Project Type
Coordinated Research Project
Project Code
E43041
CRP
2320
Approved Date
3 September 2026
Project Status
New - Collecting or Evaluating proposals
Description
Hunger remains a significant issue, particularly in Indo-Pacific region, while experiencing multiple forms of malnutrition, with sharply rising risk of obesity and related non-communicable diseases while micronutrient deficiencies and chronic malnutrition persist. Climate change, driven by the continuous increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is increasingly and negatively affecting food security, safety, agricultural production, and productivity, especially in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. The Indo-Pacific region faces severe food and nutritional security challenges, worsened by climate change, soil degradation, and limited use of indigenous crops. With rising populations and changing dietary patterns, there is an urgent need to improve the nutritional quality and resilience of crops with an enhanced focus on nutrient balance and bioavailability from consumed foods. The Atoms4Food Flagship initiative of The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and International Atomic Energy Agency (FAO-IAEA) aims to integrate nuclear technologies to enhance productivity and ensure food and nutrition security as well as inform public health nutrition programs by providing new information on diet quality, ensuring communities have access to diverse and nutritious foods. Under this framework, through a coordinated research project (CRP), the IAEA will utilize its expertise to generate strong evidence on the nutritional value and potential health benefits of crops for vulnerable groups in the Indo-Pacific region. This will be achieved through the development of resilient crop varieties, improved soil and water management, and better crop nutrition, and nutritional quality. Combining nuclear methods for plant mutation breeding with advanced soil and water management techniques, and use of stable isotope techniques for assessing nutrient bioavailability, the CRP seeks to create robust, nutrient-rich, and climate-resilient food crops for at-risk communities in these regions that will have the potential to improve nutrition and health outcomes.
Specific objectives:
1. Generate optimized methodologies for nutritional quality evaluation in breeding programmes and develop improved mutant lines/varieties to support availability of climate resilient, nutrient dense crops in the Indo Pacific region.2. Develop, validate, and disseminate crop specific-climate resilient agricultural (CRA) practices to improve soil fertility, enhance nutrient use efficiency contributing to increased productivity of major food security crops. 3. Assess the nutritional profile and nutrient bioavailability, specifically, essential micronutrients, and protein and amino acid digestibility of mutant crop derivatives for human health outcomes in the target populations.4. Strengthe
