HONG KONG. — Genetically modified (GMO)
Golden Rice may be available to farmers as early as 2011,
possibly helping to save millions of children threatened with
blindness or premature death due to Vitamin A deficiency.
Robert Zeigler, director general of the
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), told Reuters it
expected to release the GMO rice, enriched with Vitamin A, by
2011. It was conducting its first field trials in the
Philippines this year.
It would be 10 years since the invention in
2001 of Golden Rice, which scientists have said may prove that
the controversial biotechnology can help feed the poor and
needy if applied with care and caution.
There is as yet no GMO rice grown
commercially. Widely produced transgenic products, such as GMO
soy, corn or cotton, are mostly pest- or herbicide-resistant.
They are beneficial to farmers, but not necessarily to
consumers.
Golden Rice — which includes three new
genes, including two from daffodil — is yellowish and contains
beta-carotene, a substance that human bodies convert to
Vitamin A. Its research has been seen as a model for
cooperation between public and private sectors in pursuit of
human welfare. Its inventors are claiming no property rights
for the rice. Neither are the companies that own the
technology involved.
Zeigler was talking early this week after
IRRI received a grant of $20 million for three years –
equivalent to 17 percent of its budget – from the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation.
HIGH GRAIN PRICES
The executive said the funding came at a
vital time when soaring food prices and climate change
threatened the gains made through the Green Revolution over
the past several decades.
"The concern that we have ... is that these
gains in productivity, food security, cheap rice, cheap food
are in jeopardy," Zeigler said. "We have to address this."
IRRI says the fund will help it reach 18
million households, especially in South Asia and sub-Saharan
Africa, with better rice varieties and raise yields by 50
percent in the next 10 years.
IRRI calculated the world needed to
increase the annual rice output by nearly 70 percent to 880
million tons by 2025 from 520 million tons currently to meet
projected global demand.
"We are focusing on more difficult rice
growing areas that do not have irrigation," Zeigler said.
"Drought tolerance and flood tolerance is the key for very
impoverished areas."
This year, IRRI plans to hand out to more
farmers in Bangladesh and India a flood-resistant non-GMO
rice, for which scientists made a breakthrough in 2006.
"We have now moved that gene into
commercial varieties, the varieties that can be grown by
farmers," he said. "We tested them in Bangladesh this year. It
went extremely well."
Together with China, IRRI is also working
on dry land rice, known as aerobic rice, that can grow on dry
soil like wheat.
"Water for agriculture is becoming more and more scarce as
water is diverted for urban use and industrial use," he said.
"We are working very hard to develop rice that can be grown
almost like a wheat crop or corn plant. However, that again is
a very difficult and challenging scientific problem." –
Reuters
