The comforting but questionable assumption that nature knows best strongly influences the food-buying preferences of Western consumers. The booming organic food industry takes the mindset a step further, by using only “natural” fertilisers and pesticides.

Unfortunately, hundreds of millions of people in the world’s poorer nations suffer because “natural” does not mean optimal nutrition. Professor Dean DellaPenna, professor of biochemistry at Michigan State University, would like to make it so.

DellaPenna is a strong proponent of fine-tuning the metabolism of major crop species to improve both the concentration and balance of essential micronutrients like iron, the two major lipid-soluble vitamins – the vitamin A precursor, beta carotene, and vitamin E – and other minerals.

The world’s No 1 human staple, rice, is naturally deficient in beta-carotene and iron. Some 400 million children in rice-eating countries suffer from poor vision and often blindness, because of vitamin A deficiency. Rice is also lacking in iron, causing anaemia and pregnancy complications in millions of women.

DellaPenna, a plenary speaker at ComBio 2008, will describe his current research on understanding and manipulating the synthesis of carotenoids and vitamin E – both important antioxidants – in plants.

While the need is most urgent in developing nations, DellaPenna is a vocal advocate for improving the nutritional properties of staple crops to deliver a healthier, more balanced diet in wealthy nations.

As Swiss researchers Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer, the inventors of beta-carotene-enriched “golden rice”, learned, the challenges are not only technical. Western activists have convinced many risk-averse Western consumers that genetically modified crops pose unacceptable threats to the environment, and to their health.

Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, and Britain’s largest producer of organic foods, declared a decade ago that scientists were “entering realms that belong to God, and God alone” by meddling with crop genes.

The prince returned to his theme in August this year, warning that big agribusiness corporations and their GM crops would be “the absolute destruction of everything, and the classic way of ensuring that there is no food in the future”. But, in a sign of changing times, some UK newspaper columnists lampooned the prince’s views.

DellaPenna believes scientists need to do a better job of educating public. “The reality is that if you go into a supermarket, nearly every food has been genetically modified in some way,” he says.

“Most of the produce – even organic produce – is mutant. Humans have been selecting for particular mutations for 10,000 years, and we have been using chemical and radiation mutagenesis for decades.”