Professor Robinson told BBC News Online that singling out the gene from the 30,000 in the arabidopsis genome was a painstaking and difficult task. Ferric iron is more common in soils but cannot be absorbed by humans. The FRO2 gene helps plants produce an enzyme called reductase, which enables them to convert ferric iron to ferrous iron. Manipulating this gene to produce more reductase will enable plants living in poor soil to take up more of the nutritious form of iron. The team is now carrying out further tests to see whether the increased production of iron can be concentrated in parts of the plant that humans might eat.
Iron deficiency leads to diseases like anaemia, in which the blood contains too little haemoglobin.
The research is published in Nature. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.