**5. Methods employed for biofortification**

Biofortification has been promoted as a long-term alternative to standard treatments since they are ineffectual for boosting mineral nutrition. The process of biofortification raises the mineral content and bioavailability of staple crop edible sections. While the latter can be achieved by agronomic intervention, plant breeding, or genetic engineering, mineral bioavailability can only be affected by these two methods as shown below in **Tables 3** and **4** which describes about varieties, nutritional aspects and their adaptation.

Despite millets' higher quality, India has only given pearl millet the top priority when it comes to crops for iron biofortification. Therefore, there is a lot of room to use the minor millets for biofortification. There are two ways to accomplish biofortification in millets:


#### *Agronomic Biofortification of Millets: New Way to Alleviate Malnutrition DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.110805*


#### **Table 3.**

*Millets breeding for improving lives of million people around the world.*


#### **Table 4.**

*Millet varieties, nutritional aspects and their adaptation in various states of India.*


#### **Table 5.**

*Genetic biofortification through identification/development of biofortified varieties of different crops [74].*

#### **Figure 3.**

*Schematic overview of micronutrient (MN) pathway from soil to humans and that influence MN bioavailability to the next level [78].*

This study emphasizes the value of millet germplasm characterization for creating biofortified cultivars and the application of omics techniques to increase grain-nutrient density. We highlight the use of genetic engineering and genome editing technologies to promote nutrient accumulation in edible sections and to prevent the production of anti-nutrients, following the example of other cereal crops as shown above **Figure 3**.
