Nutritional improvements in plants: time to bite on biofortified foods

Modern breeding, molecular genetic and biotechnology studies frequently describe changes in plant metabolism to improve nutritional content; however, this is often where the process of assessing biofortification ends. Ideally, these modified plants need to be used in controlled animal and human feeding studies to assess nutritional impact. Such bioavailability studies are crucial if any claims are to be made regarding health benefits and might be an important component in public acceptance of biofortified foods.