Table 1.

The discovery and application of folic acid.

Date	Description	References
1931	Wills&Mehta found that yeast extract prevents dietary anemia in rats and named it ‘Wills’ factor’	(Wills, 1931), (Watson and Castle, 1946)
1938	Yeast and liver extracts are effective in reducing monkey vegetative cells. This factor is named vitamin M	(Day et al., 1938), (Langston et al., 1938)
1941	‘FA’ receives its name and shown to be a growth factor for Streptococcus lactis R (S. faecalis)	Mitchell et al. (1941)
1945	Synthesis of FA and called pteroylglutamic acid	Angier et al. (1945)
1946	Naturally occurring folate in liver is a heptaglutamate	Pfiffner and Calkins (1946)
1964	folate deficiency and NTD occurrence was hypothesized	Hibbard (1964)
1991	The effectiveness of FA supplementation to prevent the recurrence of NTD was determined	MRC Vitamin Study Research Group (1991)
1992	Prevention by FA of a first occurrence of NTD was proven	Czeizel and Dudás (1992)
1998	In the United States and Canada, mandatory fortification of enriched cereal grain products with FA was implemented	Crider et al. (2011a)
1999	Reduction of the risk in NTD by 0.4 mg FA was proven by China-US Collaborative Project	Berry et al. (1999)
2009	The Chinese government provides free FA for rural planned pregnant women	Ren (2015)
2010	Regulations for mandatory fortification of wheat flour with FA have been in place in 53 countries	Crider et al. (2011a)
2025	94 countries have mandates that require wheat flour, maize flour, and/or rice to be fortified with micronutrients	Food fortification initiative (2025)