The Malayan Pacific Country in Southeast Asia, "the Philippines" will promote the use of Vitamin-A- rich-Golden Rice to save lives
For the first time, Philippine farmers planted golden rice on a larger scale and harvested nearly 70 tons of the grain in October 2022. This almost endless story began at ETH Zurich. The previous failure will finally go down in agricultural history. In October 2022, farmers in the Philippine province of Antique harvested a large amount of beta-carotene-rich golden rice for the first time, a total of 67 tons from 17 fields. The dried and polished grains will be distributed to families with pregnant women, nursing mothers or children in preschool who are at risk of contracting the diseases caused by vitamin A deficiency.
ETH Professor Emeritus Ingo Potrykus, the father and inventor of Golden Rice, considers his cultivation in the Philippines as a development: "Finally, a step has been taken to do something useful. After decades of genetic engineering being used only for commercial agriculture, the first example of a humanitarian project using it to solve a major health problem is now becoming a reality.”
Vitamin A deficiency threatens millions of children
Vitamin A deficiency is a major health problem in many parts of the Philippines and other countries in the South. It causes children to go blind, suffer from mental retardation and die from weakened immune systems. Worldwide, hundreds of millions of children are at risk of these diseases.
Therefore, many other countries, such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, and China, have followed the lead of the Philippines and made great progress in introducing vitamin A rice.
Milestones
1991: Ingo Potrykus came up with the idea of a rice variety enriched with vitamin A to fight malnutrition. The experiment began in 1992. 1993: Carotenoid expert Peter Beyer joined the project.
1999: The two researchers present the Golden Rice exhibit. This progress shows that it is possible to reconstruct the carotenoid metabolic pathway in rice grains.
2000: Potrykus and Beyer decide to promote product development as important as humanitarian work. 2005: Switching from daffodil genes to maize genes increases provitamin A content.
2006-2018: Collection of all necessary data for the legal dossier required before genetically modified products can be introduced into the field. 2021: Philippine biosafety authorities allow the cultivation and consumption of golden rice.
2022: Start of planting in the Philippines under the supervision of the national rice research institute PhilRice. In the early 1990s, the former ETH professor of plant science and his colleague Peter Beyer of the University of Friborg decided to fight malnutrition - also known as "hidden hunger" - by replacing rice with grains. hereditary life so that the plant accumulates beta-carotene in it. fruit. The human body converts beta-carotene into vitamin A, which it needs to survive. This will help people in countries where rice is the main source of carbohydrates to meet their daily vitamin A needs.
In 1999, the year Potrykus retired, he and Beyer presented an example of what would become golden rice: a variety of rice that accumulates beta-carotene in its grains because of this transporter structure. which contains many foreign genes. The fruits have a yellow color: the first golden rice (GR) has become a reality.
Ingo Potrykus said: “But I am also very sad that the delay has caused millions of children to suffer. Since the amount of beta-carotene in the prototype was still too small to meet the daily human need for vitamin A, Beyer developed a second version - GR2 - together with the agricultural technology company Syngenta. Instead of daffodil genes, plant scientists use sweet corn genes. This resulted in a significant increase in the beta-carotene content of rice grains compared to the sample.
Delayed and deferred
Golden Rice was controversial from the start. It has been blocked, delayed and restricted for years. The ecosystem has fought tooth and nail against this and other genetically modified plants. The government also refused to accept the cultivation of Golden Rice. Twenty-two years passed between its development and its great harvest. Now almost 89 years old, Potrykus is happy that Golden Rice has finally been planted on a large scale: "I am very relieved to finally see the crops start after many years of delaying production,” he says. That science has conquered thought gives him great satisfaction. "But I am also deeply saddened that those delays have caused suffering for millions of children."
The challenge of deregulation
The reduction of strict regulations related to the use of genetically modified crops remains a major challenge in many countries. “Philippines data is freely available to other countries, making it easy for them to develop. read more at PHYSORG
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