Vol. 9, Special Issue 12, Part S (2025)

Micronutrient malnutrition, also known as "hidden hunger," continues to be a major global public health concern, particularly in developing countries. It affects one-third of the world's population and is caused by inadequate consumption of essential vitamins and minerals such iron, zinc, iodine, and provitamin A. Increasing the nutritional content of plants using conventional breeding, transgenic techniques, or agronomy methods is known as biofortification, and it has proven to be an economical and long-lasting way to deal with this issue. While staple crops have received most of the focus, horticulture crops like fruits and vegetables have enormous promise because of their natural abundance of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. This review discusses recent developments in biofortification techniques like gene editing, molecular breeding, and nanotechnology. Because of their extensive use and natural nutritional diversity, vegetables are perfect candidates for biofortification. With a focus on iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), selenium (Se), provitamin A, and other micronutrients essential for human health, this review summarizes the state of the art regarding vegetable biofortification techniques, advancements, difficulties, and prospects. The method of adding nutrients to food crops, known as "biofortification," offers a long-term, sustainable way to supply more micronutrients. These days, three popular methods are agronomic, conventional, and genetic engineering. Fertilizers used in agronomic biofortification might temporarily raise micronutrient levels. To create plants with the required nutrients, parent lines with high vitamin or mineral levels can be crossed over a number of generations in traditional plant breeding. By transferring desired traits from one organism to another, genetic engineering techniques are used to create new cultivars and increase their value.