BioCassava Plus

Dr. Richard Sayre, director of the Enterprise Rent-a-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels and principal investigator of the BioCassava Plus program at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, will be a guest on a live broadcast of NPR’s “Science Friday.”

Sayre will join host Ira Flatow to discuss bio-fortified crops, from technologies in the pipeline to ones being tested in Africa today.

BioCassava Plus is a team of scientists whose objective is to reduce malnutrition by delivering improved cassava cultivars that provide complete and balanced nutrition in readily marketable and higher yielding food crop.

The Danforth Center recently won a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to develop a virus-resistant cassava, a root crop. Cassava serves as the primary food source for more than 750 million people each day.

The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is a nonprofit research institute in Creve Coeur that focuses on human health and agricultural production.