Ingo Potrykus developed Golden Rice genetically engineered to combat blindness and death in children by supplying 60 per cent of the vitamin A they need in a typical daily helping of rice. His project has been opposed from the outset by environmental groups, a stance described this week as wicked by UK environment minister, Owen Paterson. Andy Coghlan asks the inventor of the rice what he makes of it all.
Why did you develop Golden Rice?
I got involved because I'm concerned about food security. I realised it's not just about calories, but also about the quality of food. I started working on it in the early 1990s with Peter Beyer. We started on the problem of iron deficiency, but that work didn't pan out, so we switched to tackling vitamin A deficiency.
By 1999 we had solved the problem. It was a surprise it worked because from the outset it looked totally crazy.
But environmental groups, including Greenpeace, opposed it?
They were against it from the beginning. They said it was fool's gold because children would need to eat several kilograms of it to get their daily requirement. Children only eat around 300 to 400 grams a day. We worked out that Greenpeace weren't right, and that the rice contained enough to meet children's needs, but we couldn't prove that because we didn't then have data from an actual trial.
That didn't kill off the project though?
Indeed no. The next big step was in 2005 when a group at biotech company Syngenta replaced one of the genes intended to produce beta-carotene. The original gene, which makes an enzyme called phytoene synthase, came from the narcissus flower, and they replaced it with one from maize that is far more efficient. It produced 20 times more beta-carotene, the molecule from carrots that combines with a second molecule of itself once inside our bodies to make a molecule of vitamin A. It was a big success.
But again, we couldn't prove we had enough to meet children's needs, so the Greenpeace myth about Golden Rice being useless lived on. They continued to say that the problem was solvable by other means.
Do they have a point? Why couldn't children just be given vitamin A capsules, or other foods that contain it?
The capsules are already being given through programmes of the World Health Organization and charities such as Hellen Keller International. They've been running the programmes for 15 years, but they cost tens of millions of dollars a year. The problem is that besides the expense, you need the infrastructure to distribute the capsules. We're aiming for people who can't be reached this way, poor farmers in remote places.
As for the possibility of eating foods that supply vitamin A, such as liver, leafy green vegetables and eggs, the people we're targeting are too poor to buy them. Some kitchen garden projects provide them, but despite these interventions we still have 6000 children dying every day. These are not enough. Our aim is to complement, not replace these programmes.
There's a project in Uganda and Mozambique to combat vitamin A deficiency by supplying sweet potatoes conventionally bred to contain extra beta-carotene. Over two years it doubled vitamin A intake in women and children compared with those who ate conventional sweet potatoes. Could this be done with rice?
Sweet potatoes naturally contain beta-carotene, so you can use traditional breeding to improve the content. Rice contains no beta-carotene, so it's impossible to introduce it without genetic engineering. Because the sweet potato project does not involve genetic modification, Greenpeace doesn't complain about it despite the aim being identical to ours. But the experience with sweet potatoes shows that what we're trying to achieve with rice is realistic. As soon as people get the potatoes, it improves their vitamin A status.
So where has the project got to now?
It took a long time, but by conventional breeding we bred our new Golden Rice with varieties to suit individual tastes in different countries. This is now completed in the Philippines, Indonesia, India, China, Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia.
Is it always golden, and what does it taste like?
It always has a beautiful yellow colour, and it tastes just the same as usual. Because it's an integral part of the data needed to satisfy regulation authorities, professional taste panels have also tested it.
Last year, didn't you finally obtain the proof you needed to show that Golden Rice provides enough vitamin A?
It was a long experiment by a group at Tufts University with colleagues from China. The outcome was fantastic. It was basically as good as it could be, with each pair of beta-carotene molecules in the rice being converted in the body to one molecule of vitamin A, the theoretical maximum. This is four times better than the conversion from spinach, which took between 7 and 8 molecules of beta-carotene to make each molecule of vitamin A.
But the researchers got into trouble because of not following the correct protocols?
Tufts has recently come out with a statement after studying what happened. It seems that the researchers didn't fully inform the participants in the trial that their children would be eating something that had been genetically modified, and that's been used by Greenpeace to turn everything upside down. But the important message from the Tufts report is that despite the procedural irregularities, the scientific data from the experiment stands firm and valid, that a single serving of rice provides 60 per cent of the recommended intake for children.
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