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Golden Rice still at development stage (23/11/2006)

1.Golden Rice still at development stage - Ashok B Sharma
2.Ingo Potrykus - GM Watch profile
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1.Golden Rice still at development stage
ASHOK B SHARMA Financial Express, November 23 2006
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=147150

NEW DELHI, NOV 22: The delay in the release of provitamin A rich Golden Rice for mass cultivation in India has led to an avoidable loss of 240,000 lives, says the co-inventor of the product Ingo Potrykus.

The transgenic Golden Rice contains two novel genes - one from maize and other from a soil bacterium. It does not contain an antibiotic resistance marker gene.

The only novelty being the protein from the bacterial gene - phytoene-desaturase, said Potrykus and claimed that no environmental risk or health problem was involved.

According to him, Golden Rice would minimise vitamin A malnutrition on basis of traditional normal diet.

Potrykus is perturbed over the ‘extreme precautionary regulation’ for genetically modified (GM) crops in India. "It led, so far, to a delay of at least six years in the use of Golden Rice with a consequence of an avoidable loss of 240,000 lives," he said.

He was also very critical of the ‘anti-GMO lobby’ for stalling the process of approval of GM crops and alleged that the delay in Indian regulatory process was due to ‘European influence’.

Golden Rice in India is still at the stage of development in the labs and the developers are yet to apply for permission for contained field trials and hence Potrykus charges against Indian regulatory authority seems to be misplaced.

Potrykus who is also the chairman of the Humanitarian Golden Rice Board and Network that the technology to Indian public sector scientists for public good. Indian scientists can isolate their own genes and use their own constructs and develop their own provitamin A rice lines.

Scientists at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and BRRI are transferring the new trait into 8 carefully selected Indian rice varieties.

Golden Rice, after its approval in the country "would be made available free of charge with limitations within the framework of humanitarian use." The farmers will be able to save seeds for the next season.

The seed multinational, Syngenta, however, maintains the rights for commercial exploitation and those interested in commercialisation of the product would have to get a licence from that company, said Potrykus.

Potrykus, however, hopes that Golden Rice would be released for farmers’ field by 2012 and would rescue 40,000 lives per year and prevent 125,000 cases of blindness. He estimated annual loss of lives in India due to vitamin A deficiency at 71,600.
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2.Ingo Potrykus
GM Watch profile
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=105&page=P

Ingo Potrykus is the developer of 'Golden Rice' - a new yellow-tinted rice variety genetically engineered to contain beta-carotene, a vitamin-A precursor.

Golden Rice has been promoted as a miracle crop, and Ingo Potrykus portrayed as a scientific hero, but there are many who question its real value and the role played by Potrykus in promoting it.

Potrykus was born in Germany in 1933. He helped develop plant genetic engineering at the Friedrich Miescher-Institute, Basel, where he worked from the mid-1970s. He went on to become Professor of Plant Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, from 1987 to April 1999, when he retired.

Prior to his retirement, his research group focused on genetic engineering projects aimed at improving yield stability and food quality in rice, wheat, sorghum and cassava. His best known project is Golden Rice which, via the insertion of a bacterial gene and two daffodil genes, contains provitamin A.

Golden Rice is intended to address a major problem in developing countries arising from vitamin A deficiency (VAD). The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 230 million children are at risk of VAD. Vitamin A is important for sight, immunity to disease, growth and normal development. VAD is a major cause of blindness, especially among children, and it also exacerbates the effects of measles and diarrhoeal and respiratory illnesses. Over one million VAD-related deaths occur each year. VAD is particularly concentrated in SE Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, as well as in refugees’settlements and among displaced populations. VAD also tends to occur where rice is the major staple food as rice plants do not provide provitamin A.

Potrykus originally approached Nestle about funding his Golden Rice project. When that failed, he approached the Rockefeller Foundation who agreed to do so, as did FAIR, the European Commission's agricultural research programme.

Since his retirement, Potrykus has devoted his time and energy to achieving the introduction of Golden Rice. He is president of the international Humanitarian Golden Rice Board and intends to make the rice freely available to 'national and international agricultural research centres'. Collaboration is already underway with 14 rice institutions in India, China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

However, Potrykus and his work remain highly controversial for two reasons: its PR exploitation, and the question of whether Golden Rice provides either the most effective or the most desirable solution to VAD.

The controversy over the PR uses of Golden Rice arose in 2000 when, a year after his official retirement, Potrykus decided it was the time to launch a publicity offensive on Golden Rice. He initially submitted a paper to the journal Nature, with a covering letter pointing up its relevance to the wider GM debate, but Nature rejected it. At that point, Peter Raven, a close ally of Monsanto's, became involved and with Raven's help Potrykus managed to launch his publicity bandwagon.

Potrykus says, 'The press conference in St. Louis, the presentation at the Nature Biotechnology Conference in London, the Science publication with the commentary (Guerrinot 2000), the feature story in TIME Magazine all led to an overwhelming coverage of the "Golden Rice" story on

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