THE GOLDEN RICE

By: - Ambesh SrivastavaGuided By: - Dr. Somashekhar

Topics Of Discussion

• Introduction• Creation of Golden Rice• Subsequent Development• Golden Rice & Vitamin-A deficiency• Golden Rice & IPRs• Opposition• Bibliography

Introduction

• Variety of Oryza sativa• Biosynthesizes β-Carotene• First published in the Science, 2000• To alleviate Vitamin-A deficiency• In 2005, Golden Rice 2 was announced• Neither variety is currently available for consumption.

Creation Of Golden Rice

• Created by Ingo Potrykus, Institute Of Plant Sciences & Peter Beyer, University Of Freiburg.• Started in 1992 and at the time of publication in 2000• Was designed to produce β-carotene, a precursor of Vitamin A, in the part of rice that people eat, the endosperm.• Original Golden rice was called SGR1

• Created by transforming rice with two beta- carotene biosynthesis genes:• psy (phytoene synthase) from daffodil (Narcissus pseudonarcissus)• crt1 from the soil bacterium Erwinia uredovora

Subsequent Development

• Has been bred with local rice cultivars in the Philippines, Taiwan and with the American rice cultivar 'Cocodrie'.

• First field trials of cultivars were conducted by Louisiana State University Agricultural Center in 2004.

• Produces 4 to 5 times more β-carotene than Golden rice grown under greenhouse conditions

• In 2005, a team of researchers at biotechnology company Syngenta produced a variety of golden rice called "Golden Rice 2“.

• Golden rice 2 produces 23 times more carotenoids than golden rice (up to 37 µg/g).

• Bioavailability of the carotene from either variety has not been tested in any model.

• In June 2005, researcher Peter Beyer received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to further improve Golden rice.

Golden Rice and Vitamin A Deficiency

• To help children who suffer from Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD).

• VAD is responsible for 1–2 million deaths, 500,000 cases of irreversible blindness and millions of cases of xerophthalmia annually.

• Keratomalacia also causes blindness.• Children and pregnant women are at highest

risk.• Because many countries have rice as a staple

component of their diet.

• So Golden Rice is a less expensive & good supplement & alternative of vitamin-A deficiency.

• Equivalent to the genetically engineered fluoridated water or iodized salt.

• Since carotenes are hydrophobic, there need a great amount of fat to consume vitamin-A rich rice.

• Greenpeace estimated that – adult humans would need to eat about 9

kilograms of cooked Golden Rice– while a breast-feeding woman would need

twice the amount

Golden rice and intellectual property issues

• Potrykus has spearheaded an effort to have golden rice distributed for free to subsistence farmers.

• So this requires several companies which had intellectual property rights to the results of Beyer's research to license it for free.

• Beyer and Potrykus made use of 70 Intellectual Property rights belonging to 32 different companies and universities in the making of golden rice.

• In this Zeneca (now called Syngenta) and humanitarian partners in the project could use golden rice in breeding programs and to develop new crops.

• Monsanto was one of the first companies to grant the group free licences.

• Group also had to define the cutoff between humanitarian and commercial use.– This figure was set at $10 000.– As long as a farmer or subsequent user of

golden rice genetics does not make > $10000/yr, they need not pay any royalties to Syngenta.

Opposition

• Critics of genetically engineered crops have raised various concerns– Golden rice originally did not have sufficient

vitamin A.• But new strains were developed that solve this

problem.• There are still doubts about the speed at which

Vitamin A degrades once the plant is harvested, and how much would remain after cooking.

• Greenpeace opposes all GMOs, and is concerned that golden rice is a Trojan horse that will open the door to more widespread use of GMOs.

• Vandana Shiva, an Indian anti-GMO activist, argued that the problem was not particular deficiencies in the crops themselves, but problems with poverty and loss of biodiversity in food crops.

• These problems are aggravated by the corporate control of agriculture based on genetically modified foods.

• Some groups have argued that a varied diet containing vitamin A rich foods like sweet potato, leafy green vegetables and fruit would provide children with sufficient vitamin A.

• Rice with the aleurone intact contains more B vitamins, iron, manganese, selenium, zinc and phosphorus than milled rice.

• The Institute of Science in Society claims that if rice was not milled that supplementation would not be necessary.

Bibliography

• Slater Adrian, Plant Biotechnology-The Genetic Manipulation of Plants, Reprinted 2006, Oxford University Press, Pg. 247-249.

• Urls: -– www.wikipedia.com– www.biotech-info.net– www.sirc.org– www.goldenrice.org– www.reason.com– www.loe.org– www.sfsu.edu

Thank u

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