Golden rice - New hope for rice consumers

D BAJRACHARYA

Rice serves as the staple food for nearly 3 billion of the world’s total population of 6 billion. Many people in Asian countries get their nutrition almost exclusively from rice. Their daily diet consists of large quantity of rice and hardly anything else.

Rice is not necessarily a complete food. It contains little iron. Many important amino acids, the so-called ‘essential’ amino acids, are missing or found in very small amounts. Even more important, ordinary rice grains contain no vitamin A because they lack beta-carotene or provitamin A that serves as the building block for vitamin A. Among others, vitamin A is necessary for the maintenance of outermost layer of cells and making rhodopsin, the visual pigments. Vitamin A deficiency leads to night blindness and reduction of resistance to diseases. Nearly 800 million rice consumers in Asia suffer from serious vitamin A deficiency and related health problems. In many developing countries, international health organizations freely provide vitamin A pills to treat vitamin A deficiency. However, due to distribution problems, such efforts have achieved so far only modest success in most of the countries. At least one million children still die and more than 500 000 children go blind every year in Asia due to vitamin A deficiency.

Ingo Potrykus of Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland, thought of a more effective and cheaper alternative to solve the problem of vitamin A deficiency in poor rice consumers. He reasoned that if beta-carotene can be produced in rice grains, rice consumers would automatically get their vitamin A requirement from their daily diet and there will be no need for vitamin pills. In 2000, Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer of Freiburg University, Germany, announced that by using transgenic technology they have indeed produced beta-carotene in rice grains.

Ever since Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer pioneered the technique of transferring genetic material from one organism (frog) to another (E.coli, a bacterium) in 1974, it has now become possible for scientists to take out genetic material from nearly any organism and transfer it into any other organism. This technique, known as recombinant DNA technology or transgenic technology, was successfully used to produce the first transgenic plant in 1983. Using the same technique, Potrykus and Beyer, who is an expert on beta-carotene pathway in daffodils, inserted two genes from daffodil and one from Erwinia uredofora, a bacterium, into rice plants to create beta-carotene pathway in the normally white rice grains. In contrast to ordinary white rice grains, the genetically modified rice produced pale yellow grains. The yellow color of the genetically modified rice grains was due to the presence of beta-carotene in them. Yellow rice grains were quickly dubbed as "golden rice" (for its color, not monetary value). In this way, Potrykus and Beyer were indeed successful to produce vitamin A in rice grains.

It was considered a great scientific achievement in the field of transgenic technology. For the first time a group of genes (not just a single gene, as many had already done before) that represented a key part of a biochemical pathway was successfully transferred. Scientists, industry and media hailed it as a great achievement that could alleviate vitamin A deficiency that is responsible for millions of cases of death and blindness in developing countries. Golden rice is considered as the first compelling example of a genetically modified crop that will benefit both the farmers who grow it and also the consumers who eat it. Potrykus and Beyer have announced to donate the technology free of cost for developing countries. Golden rice is being now tested and refined. Experiments are now going on in the Philippines, China, India, Vietnam and many other countries to transfer the golden rice’s property of producing beta-carotene to locally important varieties. It is expected that in less than five years’ time golden rice should be available for mass cultivation.

Works are now in progress to use the transgenic technology to also enhance the levels of iron and essential amino acids in rice. Although these experiments have not yet been completed, the results so far have been very encouraging. Iron deficiency alone affects nearly 2.4 billion people globally, mostly women and children. It is the major cause of mortality among women and children. Protein deficiency causes serious and irreparable physical and mental damage in millions of children in developing countries. A new variety of rice that is fortified with vitamin A and increased level of iron and protein would play a great role in overcoming major nutrition-related health problems of billions of people for whom rice is the staple food.

Although genetically modified (GM) foods like golden rice can play a critical role in alleviating hunger and poverty worldwide, there is a great public concern about the risks and benefits of such foods. The long-term effect of such foods on human health is not yet well understood. There is also a great concern that genetically modified plants might cause genetic pollution of wild plants due to exchange of genes between transgenic plants and their wild relatives leading to unpredictable and dire consequences on biodiversity and environment. Activists opposed to GM foods quickly denounced golden rice as being little more than "fool’s gold" or "the great yellow hype". Professional activists opposed to GM foods are using every means to prevent golden rice acceptance. Many of those who are concerned about poverty and hunger are, however, convinced that transgenic crops such as golden rice have a critical role to play in feeding the world. They also point out that there has so far been no single case of illness or death attributed to GM foods, whereas more than 5000 people reportedly die of food poisoning in the USA every year by consuming normal foods. Proponents of GM foods accuse activists opposed to GM crops of being ‘well-fed folks’ from affluent societies whose arguments are based more on assumptions than scientific reasoning and having little concern for the poor. According to Potrykus, it will not only be irresponsible but also immoral not to use the advances in transgenic technology to solve world food problem.

There is no doubt that transgenic technology can be used for the benefit of humankind. The challenge for scientists is to convince the society that benefits of such technology far outweigh the risks.

(The author is the Vice-Chancellor of Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (RONAST))

CAN Info Tech 2003

Sudan Jha

Computer Association of Nepal is organising the "CAN Info Tech 2003", the largest exposition of IT products from January 23 to January 28. The show is aimed at raising the awareness level s of people about IT and highlighting the recent developments in the sector of IT. The event is expected to encompass the recent and advanced products in IT and impart knowledge on the latest and emerging trends in the field of information technology.

The conference will discuss practical aspects of IT and provide the opportunity to learn from each other’s experience. The conference will act as a common platform for sharing success/failure stories related to applications of Information Technologies. The research papers and technology papers have been invited from around the world with the interest in practical experiences if Information technology arena. The aim of the conference is to provide value for the professionals. The three main themes for this year’s conference are: Software and Multimedia development, Information Security for e-services, and Networking for future. The conference will be supplemented by one day of pre-conference tutorials and a post conference workshop. Proposals for tutorials and workshops are also requested from experts and professionals.

A South Asian Network Operators Group (SANOG) meeting will also be held in the picturesque city of Kathmandu. The event is scheduled for 23-28 January 2003. A fellowship programme, sponsored by the association to enable people from around the region to participate in the conference, is also being announced. As data networks have grown in the South Asian region, CAN has taken the initiative for a South Asian Network Operators Group (SANOG) meeting. This is in line with established practices like NANOG in North America, RIPE NCC Meetings in Europe and APRICOT in Asia. The meeting will provide a regional forum to discuss operational issues and technologies closer home for data operators in the South Asian Region. The themes for this year’s conference includes operational technologies as an inherent part, to facilitate the organisation of SANOG I.

The Conference programme includes six days of non-stop technology show, tutorials, and conference sessions. The conference will have tutorials on BGP, DNS, DNS Security, IPv6, IXPs, Advanced routing concepts and development, Distributed computer and network security, XML, Unicode devngarai implementation, QoS (Quality of service) in ISP networks, MPLS and Computer aided Film editing.

One of the major parts of the show is "APNIC training on IP Address management". Two-day’s of the conference will have different panel sessions on unsolicited commercial e-mails, open source and security. The conference will see more than 20 papers presented in the two days.

The keynote speakers of the show are Kurt Erik Lindqvist (Netnod,Stockholm) and Paul Vixie (Internet Software Consortium (ISC), Principal author of BIND). Kurt Erik will be speaking on "Operational Stability of the Internet" and Paul Vixie will highlight the different aspects of "Future of IP Addressing":

Experts from USA, India, Nepal, Australia, Sweden, Pakistan, Romania, Korea, Pakistan and Germany will be making their presentations at the CAN Info Tech 2003. The fair is being supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Royal Thai Embassy, Asian-Oceanian Computing Industry Organisation, Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industries, Nepal Chamber of Commerce, Nepal Telecommunications Corporation and Institute of Engineering.

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