Efforts are being made to obtain stable transplastomic plants. Improvement in nutritional quality Transformation technology provides a wide scope to manipulate plant's metabolism to improve the quality traits. We have initiated a new programme aimed at improving the nutritional quality of food crops. To begin with, we intend to increase the levels of dietary iron in food grains. In humans, iron deficiency leads to anemia.
Dietary iron obtained from plant sources is significant.
Therefore, our aim is to over-express the ferretin gene that can substantially increase the iron content in food grains. Ferritin is an iron storage protein found in animals, plants and bacteria. The ferritin complex, consisting of 24 subunits, stores up to 4,500 atoms of iron in its central cavity. Recent studies have demonstrated that plant ferritin subunits encoded in the nucleus are synthesised in the cytoplasm with a transit peptide and subsequently transported into plastids. Increases in the ferritin content in plants by gene manipulation could prove beneficial in a number of ways, as in most diets the daily requirements of this element are not met.