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Golden Rice set for first field trials
Golden Rice in India may be ready in the field for first field trials within a year, writes Satyen Mohapatra.
Golden Rice in India may be ready in the field for first field trials within a year,according to Dr Mangala Rai, Director General of Indian Council of Agricultural Research.
Golden Rice or rice produced through genetic engineering to have pro vitamin A (beta carotene) was created by Ingo Potrykus of the Institute of Plant Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology working with Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg.
As India and many other developing countries continue to have large scale vitamin A deficiency among children,pregnant women which leads to deaths,irreversible blindness and Xerophthalmia( destructive dryness of the eyes), Golden rice is expected to fulfil this deficiency as most people rely on rice as staple food.
Dr Mangla Rai said that there had been some delay in the program because the Golden rice developed by Ingo Potrykus gave very little quantity of Vitamin A in each rice grain and one had to consume large amounts of rice to get the recommended daily requirement of Vitamin A.
However in 2005 a new variety of Golden rice was developed having upto 23 times more beta carotene than the original variety .
“This was possible because the new set of gene was transferred from maize,”Dr Mangla Rai says.
We have to test the functioning of Golden rice in Indian agronomic conditions, he said.
As a transgenic Golden rice would go through all the regulatory processes, he addded.
The ICAR which is also working on transgenic potato with higher protein content would be ready much earlier than Golden rice,he said.
According to Director General International Rice Research Instititute, Phillipines, Robert S Ziegler,Golden rice maybe ready within the next six months at their Institute.
He said that support for international research on rice had been on the decline but India had recently tripled its support to IRRI.
