Transgenic technologies in cassava for nutritional improvement and viral disease resistance: a key strategy for food security in Africa

Abstract

As a major staple food source in Africa and other tropical developing countries, cassava (Manihot esculenta) provides basic sustenance for many subsistence farmers. However, cassava roots mainly accumulate starch with limited contribution of other nutrients such as proteins and vitamins. Also, two viral diseases, cassava mosaic disease (CMD) and cassava brown streak disease (CBSD), cause great losses in cassava production in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian sub-continent. Genetic engineering provides promising approaches to improve nutritional value and increase resistance to viral diseases in cassava. This report presents several successful case studies on engineering protein content by overexpression of nutritious storage proteins and improving cassava resistance to viral diseases by RNA interference. Perspectives on the sustainable acquisition of new knowledge and development of biotechnology to solve these bottlenecks are discussed.

Keywords

Manihot esculenta / protein enhancement / RNA interference / transgenesis / virus resistance

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to our team members of the Shanghai Center for Cassava Biotechnology both in ETH Zurich and SIBS who have contributed to the studies mentioned in the review. Parts of this article are based on material previously submitted to the book achieving sustainable cultivation of cassava (ed. Hershey C.) and are reproduced with the permission of Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing. This work was supported by grants from the National Key Technology Research and Development Program of China (2015BAD15B01), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31271775), and the Earmarked Fund for China Agriculture Research System (CARS-12-shzp).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Maliwan Naconsie and Peng Zhang declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

This article is a review and does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2016. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)