WASHINGTON, Jan 14 (AFP) - Researchers have genetically engineered golden-colored "miracle" rice loaded with vitamin A that could help some 124 million children worldwide suffering from this vitamin deficiency, according to Science magazine. According to the report, seeds of the new rice will be freely available to farmers in developing countries, where many of the children are deficient in vitamin A. The problem with a diet deficient of vitamin A is that it exacerbates a range of health problems and can cause blindness.
In Southeast Asia alone, it is estimated that a quarter of a million children go blind each year because of this nutritional deficiency and that improved nutrition could prevent one to two million deaths annually.
A team of researchers led by Xudong Ye, and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the European Community Biotech Program, engineered the new rice. Mary Lou Guerinot of Science magazine commented that the modification "exemplifies the best that agricultural biotechnology has to offer a world whose population is predicted to reach seven billion by 2013."
Although half the world's people eat rice every day, rice is a poor source of many essential micronutrients and vitamins, she noted. While Ye's new "miracle rice" seemed to promise to break that pattern, plenty of work remained to be done, Guerinot added. She said, "Initial calculations suggest that these engineered plants can provide enough provitamin A to satisfy the recommended dietary allowance with a daily ration of rice. But only when true-breeding lines are available will it be possible to accurately determine levels," for each type of carotenoid (provitamin A) in the grains.
Because most rice is milled to remove the oil-rich layer that turns rancid upon storage, the remaining edible part of the rice, the endosperm, lacks several essential nutrients. By using recombinant genetic technologies, Ye and his team worked to ensure the provitamin appeared in the endosperm.
The fact that rice plants normally make carotenoids anyway "should go a long way toward calming fears about 'Frankenfoods,'" Guerinot said, but cautioned that "field testing will tell us whether production of carotenoids in rice endosperm will entail any metabolic tradeoffs."
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