麻豆传媒

RICE was on the menu in our 14 August 1999 issue 鈥� specifically, the problems with the staple food crop of half the world. 鈥淩ice contains the least iron of any cereal grain. In addition, it is rich in a compound called phytate, which can prevent the uptake of up to 98 per cent of iron from other dietary sources by binding to it in the gut,鈥� wrote our correspondent Bob Holmes.

The result was widespread anaemia in rice-dependent areas. 鈥淵ou will not find any illness worldwide which is so widely distributed,鈥� Ingo Potrykus, a plant scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, told Holmes, reporting from the International Botanical Congress in St Louis, Missouri. That wasn鈥檛 the only problem. 鈥淩ice also lacks vitamin A, leading to blindness and reduced disease resistance in about 400 million children worldwide,鈥� Holmes said.

Potrykus had solutions. His team had genetically engineered rice strains to contain genes for an enzyme that destroys phytate, for an iron-storage compound called ferritin and for a protein containing the amino acid cysteine, which helps the gut absorb iron. Alongside Peter Beyer at the University of Freiburg in Germany, he had also inserted three genes promoting the production of beta-carotene, which makes vitamin A in the body. 鈥淭he result,鈥� Holmes wrote, 鈥渋s 鈥榞olden rice鈥� 鈥� yellow grains that contain enough beta-carotene to supply all of a person鈥檚 vitamin A needs.鈥�

The researchers had modified short-grain rice and breeders still had to cross the genes into the more common staple long-grain varieties. But, Holmes confidently predicted, 鈥渢hat, together with field trials of the new varieties, should take about three years鈥�.

That proved optimistic. Golden rice became a totem of resistance to genetically modified food. Why not cure deficiencies by instead ensuring that people in developing countries have a balanced diet with plenty of greens, critics such as the activist Vandana Shiva argued. Golden rice was, , 鈥渁 very effective strategy for corporate takeover of rice production, using the public sector as a Trojan horse鈥�.

Environmental groups such as Greenpeace have also remained implacably opposed. It was only in 2018 that golden rice received its first approvals 鈥� ironically, in the relatively well-fed nations of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US.