Golden Rice ; Potentially Most Valuable Products Of Genetic Engineering And A Cost-Efficient Solution To Reduce Health Costs

Shailesh Saxena

Rice is the staple food of over half the world's population. It is the predominant dietary energy source for 17 countries in Asia and the Pacific, 9 countries in North and South America and 8 countries in Africa. Rice provides 20% of the world’s dietary energy supply. Millions of people in Asia and Africa don't get enough of this vital nutrient, so this rice has become the symbol of an idea: that genetically engineered crops can be a tool to improve the lives of the poor. Thus the idea of a fight against nutritional deficiency can be achieved through Genetic engineering came into existence in form of Golden Rice in the year 2004. As we are aware that Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is considered to be one of the most harmful forms of malnutrition in the developing world. It can cause blindness, limit growth, and weaken the body's immune system, thereby increasing morbidity and mortality. The condition affects more than 140 million pre-school children in 118 nations, and more than seven million pregnant women. It is probably the leading cause of childhood blindness in developing countries.

 To overcome the nutrient deficiency problem of the developing world Golden Rice was invented by Professor Ingo Potrykus, then of the Institute for Plant Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and Professor Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg, Germany. By 1999, Professor Potrykus and Dr Beyer produced a prototype Golden Rice and published their landmark research in Science.

The Golden Rice Technology ;

A japonica variety of rice was engineered with three genes necessary for the rice grain to produce and store beta-carotene. These included two genes from the daffodil plant and a third from a bacterium. Researchers used a plant-microbe to ferry in the genes into the plant cells. The incorporation of these genes allows the rice plant to modify certain metabolic pathways in its cells to produce precursors of Vitamin A, which was previously not possible. This was considered a technical milestone, as most agronomic traits engineered to date have only required the introduction of a single gene.

Golden Rice Benefits ;

Golden Rice is one of the potentially most valuable products of genetic engineering public health-wise. This is the rice which has genes added to it which allow the plant to make beta-carotene in its grain. What makes this rice so valuable is that Beta-carotene is the precursor to vitamin A — and vitamin A is lacking in the diets of millions around the world. An insufficient supply of vitamin A, especially in children, can lead to blindness and death, as well as increased susceptibility to and death from diseases such as measles.

A new report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition assesses the possible impact of replacing regular white rice with Golden Rice in regions of Asia where rice is a major staple food. The authors, led by Dr. Fabiana F. De Moura from the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington D.C., used data from Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Philippines to quantify the usual  intake of rice and vitamin A in adult, non-pregnant and non-lactating women, as well as of non-breastfed children between 1 and 3 years old. Then, using that data, they simulated possible scenarios if various proportions of the population (ranging from 10 to 70 percent) replaced their usual rice by golden rice, and if varying amounts (from 3.8:1 to 12:1 — number of molecules of beta-carotene to produce 1 molecule of vitamin A) were used for the conversion of beta-carotene to vitamin A by the recipient's body.

They found that the usual intake of vitamin A intake was less than optimal — especially in the three regions studied in Bangladesh, where 93 percent of women and young children had inadequate intakes. The situation was not as bad in Indonesia, where 68 and 34 percent of women and children, respectively, had inadequate intakes, or in the Philippines where the figures were 74 and 43 percent. These figures certainly indicate that such suboptimal intakes demand attention.

As expected, the researchers found that the percentages of inadequacy fell the most in their model— particularly in Bangladeshi women and children — when 70 percent of the population switched to golden rice. For those individuals, the poorest group studied, rates of inadequacy dropped from 93 percent to about 20 percent for women and 13 percent for children. And of course, the more beta-carotene the rice contained, the greater the decrease in inadequacy. The models of both the Indonesian and Filipino groups also indicated a substantial decline in levels of deficiency, though not as significant as that seen in Bangladeshis.

The authors stated that programs designed to normalize vitamin A intake would have to "put more emphasis on encouraging the adoption of biofortified beta-carotene rice among farmers and subsequently creating a demand for it on the consumer side to drive both adoption and consumption."

Golden Rice Opposition ;

Golden Rice may seem like a realistic solution for VAD (VAD), but those opposed say the project is deeply flawed. For starters, Friends of the Earth and MASIPAG (the farmer-led network of people’s organizations.) agree that merely planting Golden Rice will not solve the VAD crisis. They point out that there are multiple recourses for malnutrition planned and currently in place, that are cheaper and do not require GMOs, that should make golden rice unnecessary. But it should be considered that the  Planting and consuming golden rice alongside other interventions (like UNICEF’s supplement program) will make more of a difference than anyone intervention alone. We should use all tools at our disposal to prevent disease and lifelong disability.

Another source of opposition to the project stems from questions regarding the motives of the Golden Rice Project and its ties to several large biotech industries. Is it a ploy to enhance public support for GMOs, which could take funding away from cheaper, more realistic solutions? Or are they out to make a profit?

But the facts that prevailed The Golden Rice Project has the freedom to operate under humanitarian use, therefore the technology can be provided free of charge in developing countries.

Greenpeace has variously alleged that the levels of beta-carotene in Golden Rice are too low to be effective or so high that they would be toxic. But feeding trials have shown the rice to be highly effective in preventing VAD, and toxicity is virtually impossible because conversion of beta-carotene to vitamin A ceases when vitamin A levels in the blood rise above normal. With no rational basis for its antagonism, the organization has been forced to adopt a “fake news” strategy of trying to scare off the developing nations that are considering adopting the lifesaving products.

Conclusion ;

In the United States alone, more than 90 percent of all corn, soy and sugar beets are genetically engineered, and in two decades of consumption of trillions of servings of food from genetically engineered plants around the world, not a single health or environmental problem has been documented.

Governments and interested parties will also have to work to counter the anti-scientific rhetoric of the fear-mongers who have demonized all GMOs and particularly golden rice. Hysterical reactions to this technology have resulted in vandalized test plots in Indonesia and fear among the scientifically uneducated. But a technology which holds so much promise for the poor and ill-fed of the world must not be stymied by those with little understanding of or care about the benefits it would supply.