India has one of the world's highest rates of vitamin A deficiency, a condition that causes blindness, compromises immunity, and increases mortality, especially among young children and pregnant and lactating women. While rates have fallen, vitamin A deficiency still poses a significant problem. More than 20 million Indian children suffer from some form of the deficiency, resulting in about 330,000 deaths each year.

In this report, we evaluate the potential role of vitamin A biofortified mustard, also known as 'golden' mustard, in addressing the vitamin A deficiency problem in India. We compare this approach with two other existing interventions: high-dose supplementation and fortification of food products at the time of manufacture. We find that biofortification strategies can be a cost-effective way to reach severely vitamin A-deficient households and can play an important role as part of a broader approach to reducing VAD prevalence in India.