India to get `golden rice' on silver platter

India to get `golden rice' on silver platter
PALLAVA BAGLA

NEW DELHI, FEB 13: In a gesture that might change the lives of millions of malnourished Indian children, Swiss scientists have offered the latest from the global biotech stable -- golden rice -- to India, as a transfer of technology free of encumbrances.

This just might be a golden moment for the millions who go blind simply because they don't get Vitamin A in their daily diet. Golden rice, with its genetically engineered richness in Vitamin A, will make a difference when it finally becomes available in India. Hoever, even if the technology is transferred as promised in the next 30 days, consumers may still have to wait for at least another five years before golden rice can become a regular part of their daily diet.

Speaking recently at the inauguration of an Indo-Swiss Collaboration on Biotechnology workshop in New Delhi, Union Minister for Science and Technology, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi said: ``I am glad to hear that the golden rice technology is now available and there is freedom to operate and develop rice lines with increased vitamin A.'' He also pointed out that once these golden rice lines reach India's target population of people suffering from Vitamin A deficiency, the socio-economic benefitS would be enormous.

Also at the workshop was Ingo Potrykus, co-inventor of golden rice and Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. After having spent a decade developing this transgenic which carries genes from the ornamental plant daffodils that enable the transformed rice to make beta-carotene, a precursor of Vitamin A in the human body, Potrykus believes his rice is ready for the world and for India.

``We have prepared the organisational framework for bringing golden rice to India, and it should be here a month from now.'' He said he was even ready to carry the golden grain this time, but some regulatory negotiations were still incomplete.

Potrykus says they have been able to negotiate with multinational corporations that own the bouquet of patents that protect the commercialisation of this technology, and the corporations are willing to transfer the technology free of license fees for the poor and hungry of the world.

Meanwhile, India plans to get to work on golden rice and introduce its special qualities into local varieties. Manju Sharma, secretary of the Department of Biotechnology (which will serve as the nodal agency for this collaborative research), says: ``We are planning a multi-institution research protocol to get the golden rice gene into Indian cultivators''.

The first research samples of this wonder rice, bolstered with beta carotene -- the main precursor of Vitamin A -- and being billed as the best answer to the world's Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD) problems, are now at IRRI in Philippines, where tropical versions of the rice are to be developed over the coming months. It's an event everyone is watching because there are an estimated 124 million children globally who suffer from VAD. UNICEF estimates that roughly 1-2 million children aged 1-4 who die each year can be saved with better Vitamin A nutrition.

Potrykus says for countries like India, he would like to see the golden rice gene put into cheaper varieties of rice rather than the upmarket basmati. On their part, anti-genetic modification activists like Vandana Shiva, chief of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, New Delhi calls it a technological gimmick and dismisses it as ``jaundice rice'' that is just not going to benefit the poor.