The vast majority of research funding in the developing world is devoted to crop protection, which is probably one of the hardest topics and offers the least achievable research goals. Compared to this, engineering golden rice was easy, it worked, but it was not very well funded, and it is still not planted in the fields despite obvious benefits. 10 years ago Indian researchers developed a potato with higher protein content which could help to improve nutritional quality by a big margin. Again this was not done with much research funding and nobody is eating those potatoes. The world needs more success stories like these to accept GM crops as valuable assets for the future, and bio-engineering to create nutritionally enhanced crops is much more straightforward than trying to make plants resistant to pathogens. In my opinion, more funding should go to achievable research, and I would be interested in building a network of researchers who are interested in enhancing nutritional value in crops that feed the world. Protein content is a start, but one could specifically tackle other nutrients as well. Any suggestions will be well received.
Other ideas, closer to my field:
-Lycopene, flavonoid, vit.C content in tomato
-Cold tolerance to seed plant eariler out in the field, thus maximazing the early-crops benefits, and enabling escaping many late-season pathogens
-Salinity /drought tolerance to think big about the future prospects
I would add an increase in protein content for tuber root, such as cassava into the list. I would be very interested in participating to such endeavour.
A part from tubers where I believe CIP as been doing some work with the orange fleshed sweet potatoes, I believe that maize, sorghum and grain legumes (beans and cowpea) are the most important staple food in Sub Saharan Africa, Mozambique in particular. I believe that here, a part from protein, drought and cold tolerance are the most important factors to account. However, this has to be done in close linkage with what farmers favor the most in this crops mainly regarding grain conservation after harvest as well. An example of the importance of post-harvest conservation is the high quality protein maize (QPM) project implemented back in the days in Mozambique but it did not go that further. I don't know the reason for the failure but I can guess the tedious and long lasting uncertain crosses at the field through conventional breedings failed to guarantee a successful transfer of the desired QPM characters to the new varieties. Adding to that, when we managed to come up with a variety, it was not accepted by farmers because it was prone to beetle attack during storage. This was back in 2003-4 and now nobody talks about this varieties. I believe that if we can take all these aspects that dictate farmers preference for new materials apart from their nutritional value we can do something valuable and I would me much interested in pursuing this. At my institute we have young people and enthusiastic that I believe with proper training and guidance can contribute for the initiative.
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