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The True Story of the Genetically Modified Superfood That Almost Saved Millions

The imperiled birth—and slow decline—of golden rice..

• Science and Technology

The cover of the July 31, 2000, edition of Time magazine pictured a serious-looking bearded man surrounded by a wall of greenery: the stems, leaves, and stalks of rice plants. The caption, in large block lettering, read, “This rice could save a million kids a year.”

The man in question was Ingo Potrykus, a professor of plant sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in Zurich, where Albert Einstein had studied and taught. The rice plants around him, although the joint products of many minds and hands, had been largely inspired by him. Their kernels were not the usual plain white grains of rice. Instead, they had a distinct golden hue, the color of daffodils. When spread out on a black surface, they looked like nothing so much as tiny yellow gemstones.

This was Golden Rice, the fruit of nine years of research, experimentation, and development. The “gold” was in fact beta carotene, a substance that is converted into vitamin A in the human body. Conventional rice plants already contained beta carotene, but only in their leaves and stems, not in the kernels. Golden Rice also carries the substance in the part of the plant that people eat. This small change made Golden Rice into a miracle of nutrition: The rice could combat vitamin A deficiency in areas of the world where the condition is endemic and could, thereby, “save a million kids a year.”

Golden Rice: The Imperiled Birth of a GMO Superfood , Ed Regis, Johns Hopkins University Press, 256 pp., $29.95, October 2019

Vitamin A deficiency is practically unknown in the Western world, where people take multivitamins or get sufficient micronutrients from ordinary foods, fortified cereals, and the like. But it is a life-and-death matter for people in developing countries. Lack of vitamin A is responsible for a million deaths annually, most of them children, plus an additional 500,000 cases of blindness. In Bangladesh, China, India, and elsewhere in Asia, many children subsist on a few bowls of rice a day and almost nothing else. For them, a daily supply of Golden Rice could bring the gift of life and sight.

The superfood thus seemed to have everything going for it: It would be the basis for a sea change in public health among the world’s poorest people. It would be cheap to grow and indefinitely sustainable, because low-income farmers could save the seeds from any given harvest and plant them the following season, without purchasing them anew.

But in the 20 years since it was created, Golden Rice has not been made available to those for whom it was intended. So what happened?

For one, Golden Rice is a genetically modified organism, and as such is weighed down with all the political, ideological, and emotional baggage that has come to be associated with GMOs—stultifying government overregulation, fear and hostility, and criticism (much of it unfounded) from environmentalist and other activist organizations and individuals. Greenpeace, for one, was especially vocal in its condemnation of genetically engineered foods, Golden Rice in particular.

To many, this protracted delay has been unconscionable, and it brought forth reactions as extreme as the hyperbolic claims made by GMO opponents. In 2016, for example, George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, said in an interview with the science publication Edge :

Golden Rice was a tough call strategically for Greenpeace and some of their associates. … A million lives are at stake every year due to vitamin A deficiency, and Golden Rice was basically ready for use in 2002, so it’s been thirteen years that it’s been ready. Every year that you delay it, that’s another million people dead. That’s mass murder on a high scale. In fact, as I understand it there is an effort to bring them to trial at The Hague for crimes against humanity. Maybe that’s justified, maybe it isn’t.

Much of the pro-Golden Rice backlash was overstatement, too. For one thing, it is doubtful that Golden Rice was “ready,” in any but the most technical sense, in 2002. Indeed, some critics would argue that as a proven, viable, agricultural commodity, it is not yet ready even today. Still, the fact is that the crop has been grown, and grown successfully, first in laboratories, then in greenhouses, and finally in open fields since it was invented. The rice has also been subjected to safety studies—toxicity and allergenicity studies—and studies on human consumption, including among American adults and Chinese children. These have found it to be more effective in providing vitamin A than spinach and almost as effective as pure beta carotene oil itself.

So what really happened? Extremist opposition, protests, rhetoric, and even vandalism did not, by themselves, have the power to stop Golden Rice in its tracks or even to substantially hamper the pace of its development. Indeed, the delay may come down to a variety of other, less obvious, factors.

The first source of delay was simply the scientific and technological difficulty of inventing a new crop type, one that was nutritionally enhanced by molecular methods to express beta carotene in a part of the rice plant that did not normally do so. The tasks of genetically engineering a new metabolic pathway in the plant, getting the plant to express the desired trait at the most beneficial levels of concentration, and then transferring that newly engineered trait into several different varieties of rice successfully—all of these things were, at the time, new, untried, and unproven technologies.

The second cause was the fact that plants themselves are recalcitrant experimental subjects: They grow only so fast and no faster, and the cycle of germination, maturation, and seed production is a process that can’t really be sped up. However, this same process can easily be slowed down, or even terminated, by a variety of causes such as disease; insect attack; natural disasters and weather events including floods, frosts, heat waves, and droughts; vandalism; or simple human misjudgment or mishandling.

But it was something else altogether that had the greatest power to impede the development of Golden Rice, and that was government regulation. That power resided in a complex set of operational guidelines, restrictions, and requirements that created enormous obstacles for the Golden Rice scientists to overcome. Governments imposed these constraints in the name of safety; chiefly responsible for these restrictions is an international treaty known as the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and its highly controversial Principle 15, otherwise known as the “precautionary principle.”

This principle states that if a product of modern biotechnology poses a possible risk to human health or the environment, then it is prudent to restrict or prevent the introduction or use of that product or technology, even if the magnitude or nature of the risk is uncertain, speculative, scientifically unproven, or even unknown. Although it may have been benign in its intent, the effect of the principle has been to slow the pace of biotechnology research and development—and in some cases even to halt it, at least temporarily, at multiple times during the research and development process.

In the case of Golden Rice, the combined result of these three factors—the scientific difficulty of the project, the slow and stately rate of plant growth and reproduction, and a body of stifling government regulations governing biotechnology research and development—was to prolong the incubation time of a food that, absent externally imposed government restrictions, could otherwise be saving the sight and lives of millions of people.

The story of Golden Rice thus makes for a sad and maddening tale of scientists being repeatedly thwarted in their attempts to invent, improve, breed, field-test, and disseminate a potentially lifesaving food.

Yet despite all these roadblocks, Golden Rice has still emerged as the world’s first purposefully created biofortified crop. The project began in 1990, when Potrykus and his colleague Peter Beyer, of the University of Freiburg, started working to genetically engineer a metabolic pathway into a variety of Oryza sativa , the world’s most commonly consumed rice species, so that the plant’s edible kernels would contain beta carotene. It is an understatement to say that their task was daunting. There was no assurance when they started out that what they contemplated was even technologically possible, since it had never been done before. But the two men were highly motivated by the horrors of persistent vitamin A deficiency in developing countries, and they viewed their work as a calling—one from which they would not be deterred.

It took almost a decade of laboratory experimentation to invent Golden Rice, but by 1999, Potrykus, Beyer, and a group of colleagues finally succeeded. They inserted a set of genes into the rice genome so that the plant’s beta carotene accumulated not only in the plant’s leaves and stems, as it normally did, but also in the rice kernels themselves, just as if nature had intended things to work that way from the very beginning.

Once they accomplished that small but powerful technological trick, the inventors naively imagined that the hard part was now behind them. Little did they know that the most difficult tasks still lay ahead. Looking back on it all afterward, Potrykus reflected, “Had I known what this pursuit would entail, perhaps I would not have started.”

Once they had their initial proof-of-concept rice in hand, the inventors moved swiftly to develop Golden Rice further, first to improve the product and then to make it available, for free, to poor farmers in developing countries. In April 2000, they licensed their rice technology to the British agrochemical company Zeneca on a quid pro quo basis: The company retained the right to sell Golden Rice seeds commercially, perhaps as a health food, on the condition that the company financially supported the inventors’ future work on the rice and let them distribute the seeds at no cost to small-scale farmers. Zeneca later merged with the Swiss-based company Syngenta, but the terms of the original arrangement remained unchanged.

On Feb. 9, 2001, Greenpeace, which had a long record of opposition to all GMO foods and crops, issued a statement that an adult would have to eat 9 kilograms (about 20 pounds) of cooked Golden Rice daily to prevent persistent vitamin A deficiency, and that “a breast-feeding woman would have to eat at least 6.3 kilos in dry weight, which converts to nearly 18 kilos [40 pounds] of cooked rice per day.” Since the bioavailability of beta carotene in the rice was not then known, there was no factual basis for these claims, which in any case were later proved false. At about the same time, the Indian anti-GMO crusader Vandana Shiva called Golden Rice a “hoax.” It was the beginning of a propaganda war against the rice that has only intensified.

Around the same time, the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety was making waves. The protocol had been adopted in the year 2000 by more than 100 nations, including members of the European Union (but neither the United States nor Canada). The written document, which came into force in 2003, governed the handling, packaging, identification, transfer, and use of “living modified organisms” among the parties to the agreement.

The agreement contained one version of the precautionary principle. Exactly what that principle, which focused on avoiding unknown risks, meant in practice was not immediately clear. It is more of an ideal, a standard of perfection to be aimed at, than a real-world guide to action or public policy. On the one hand, it sounds like a dressed-up variant of a number of innocuous platitudes such as “look before you leap” or “better safe than sorry.” On the other, it can equally well be interpreted as a doctrine of “guilty until proven innocent.”

In light of the Cartagena Protocol, every aspect of Golden Rice development—from lab work to field trials to screening for “regulatory clean events”—was entangled in a Byzantine web of rules, guidelines, requirements, restrictions, and prohibitions. The simple transfer of seeds from one country to another became a major logistical problem. It could take “more than two years to transfer, for example, breeding seed from the Philippines to Vietnam, and one year from USA to India, during which time 30 politically loaded questions were asked in the Indian parliament,” Potrykus said. “These Cartagena conditions are enforced, despite common sense suggesting that it is extremely difficult to construct a hypothetical risk from seed transfer between two breeding stations in different countries, especially for Golden Rice.”

Golden Rice was unique among genetically engineered foods, and the properties that made it different also made it immune to many of the conventional criticisms of GMOs. Golden Rice was not invented for profit, and after 2004, when Syngenta renounced all commercial interest in the rice, it would no longer be developed for profit. The rice would benefit the poor and disadvantaged, not modern, multinational corporations. It would be given free of charge to subsistence farmers who can save seeds and plant them from one harvest to the next, without restriction or payment of fees or royalties. The rice was not developed primarily for the benefit of farmers, as were most other GMOs that had been designed to be resistant to herbicides or pesticides. Instead, it was developed for the sole purpose of helping users: the malnourished poor suffering from vitamin A deficiency. And Golden Rice is not a crop upon which a major genetic engineering effort conferred a relatively minor advantage such as a longer shelf life or slightly improved taste, as was true, for example, of the long-since-abandoned Flavr Savr tomato. That’s why, for all the vitriol, the real villain of the story is regulation, rather than activism run amok.

Had Golden Rice not faced overly restrictive regulatory conditions, it could have been cultivated by rice farmers and distributed throughout some of the poorest regions of South and Southeast Asia. It would have already saved millions of lives and prevented millions of children from going blind.

Excerpted from  Golden Rice . Used with permission of the publisher, Johns Hopkins University Press. Copyright © 2019.

Ed Regis is the author of Golden Rice: The Imperiled Birth of a GMO Superfood .

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• Published: 01 April 2005

Improving the nutritional value of Golden Rice through increased pro-vitamin A content

• Jacqueline A Paine 1 ,
• Catherine A Shipton 1 ,
• Sunandha Chaggar 1 ,
• Rhian M Howells 1 ,
• Mike J Kennedy 1 ,
• Gareth Vernon 1 ,
• Susan Y Wright 1 ,
• Edward Hinchliffe 2 ,
• Jessica L Adams 3 ,
• Aron L Silverstone 3 &
• Rachel Drake 1  

Nature Biotechnology volume  23 ,  pages 482–487 ( 2005 ) Cite this article

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'Golden Rice' is a variety of rice engineered to produce β-carotene (pro-vitamin A) to help combat vitamin A deficiency 1 , and it has been predicted that its contribution to alleviating vitamin A deficiency would be substantially improved through even higher β-carotene content 2 . We hypothesized that the daffodil gene encoding phytoene synthase ( psy ), one of the two genes used to develop Golden Rice, was the limiting step in β-carotene accumulation. Through systematic testing of other plant psy s, we identified a psy from maize that substantially increased carotenoid accumulation in a model plant system. We went on to develop 'Golden Rice 2' introducing this psy in combination with the Erwinia uredovora carotene desaturase ( crtI ) used to generate the original Golden Rice 1 . We observed an increase in total carotenoids of up to 23-fold (maximum 37 μg/g) compared to the original Golden Rice and a preferential accumulation of β-carotene.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Will Parish, Erik Dunder, Dong Fang Chen and Annalisa Tiozzo for tissue culture, Karen Bacon and Fasica Woldeyes for plant growth, Melanie Watkins for plant assessment, Elek Bolygo for analytical advice, Ebun Eno-Amooquaye for western blot analysis, Keith Ward for advice on statistics and others who gave technical support to the research. We would also like to thank Peter Beyer, Lu Liu and John Ray for plasmids. We thank Peter Beyer for discussion on the manuscript.

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Jacqueline A Paine, Catherine A Shipton, Sunandha Chaggar, Rhian M Howells, Mike J Kennedy, Gareth Vernon, Susan Y Wright & Rachel Drake

Syngenta CTL, Alderley Park, Alderley Edge, Macclesfield, SK10 4TJ, Cheshire, UK

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Supplementary information

Supplementary fig. 1.

Carotenoid biosynthesis in plants (PDF 64 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 2

Expression of CRTI and maize PSY proteins in rice endosperm (PDF 192 kb)

Supplementary Table 1

Carotenoid composition of maize callus expressing a Psy transgene (PDF 61 kb)

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Paine, J., Shipton, C., Chaggar, S. et al. Improving the nutritional value of Golden Rice through increased pro-vitamin A content. Nat Biotechnol 23 , 482–487 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1082

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Golden Rice FAQs

Here are answers to common questions about Golden Rice. For more information, please send an email to [email protected] .

General Questions

What is golden rice.

Golden Rice is a new type of rice that contains beta carotene (provitamin A, a plant pigment that the body converts into vitamin A as needed). This compound is what gives this grain its yellow-orange or golden color, hence its name.

Golden Rice is developed through genetic engineering. While ordinary rice does produce beta carotene, it is not found in the grain. Thus, scientists used genetic engineering to add the compound to the grain - a minor tweak that improved the grain’s nutritive value. The beta carotene in Golden Rice, which was made possible by the addition of two new enzymes, is identical to the beta-carotene found in green leafy and yellow-colored vegetables, orange-colored fruit, and even in many vitamin supplements and food ingredients.

Like ordinary rice, Golden Rice does not require any special cultivation practices, and generally has the same yield and agronomic performance.

While vitamin A can be obtained from food products and supplements, challenges regarding their availability, accessibility, and affordability make it difficult to address the problem of vitamin A deficiency (VAD). As rice is a staple food in many vitamin A-deficient communities in Asia, Golden Rice can be a significant help in improving these areas’ vitamin A status once the grain becomes available for public consumption.

How is Golden Rice better than regular rice?

Golden Rice is an enhanced version of ordinary rice designed to handle a specific nutrition issue, without any additional cost or difference in taste.

While Golden Rice is expected to cost and taste the same as regular rice, its beta carotene content makes it a valuable asset in the battle against VAD. Vitamin A is an essential micronutrient for growth, development, and keeping the body’s visual and immune systems healthy. VAD weakens the body’s resistance to diseases and infections, causes blindness, and may even result in death if left untreated.

For countries like Bangladesh and the Philippines where rice is a staple of nearly every meal, beta carotene-enriched Golden Rice can supply up to 30-50 percent of the estimated average vitamin A requirement, particularly for sectors that are most vulnerable to VAD: preschool age children and pregnant or lactating mothers. 

Is vitamin A deficiency that big of a problem?

Yes, VAD remains a major public health problem across the world, with women and children being the most vulnerable to it.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), VAD afflicts 250 million people worldwide, most of which are preschool children (190 million) and pregnant women (19 million).

VAD is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children, and increases the risk of disease and death from severe infections. Each year, up to 500,000 children go blind as a result of VAD. Half of them die within 12 months of losing their sight.

In the Philippines, VAD incidence continues to be a significant public health issue affecting 15.5%, or between 1.7 to  2 million children under the age of 5. This is based on the 2018-19 Expanded National Nutrition Survey of the Department of Science and Technology-Food and Nutrition Research Institute.

Meanwhile in Bangladesh, the most recent nutrition data shows that 20% of under-5 children have VAD. This is from the 2011-2012 National Micronutrients Status Survey.

There are existing interventions in place against vitamin A deficiency. Is Golden Rice really necessary in this fight?

Yes. Current approaches (such as vitamin A supplementation, food fortification, diet diversification, and promotion of optimal breastfeeding), have made some successes in combating vitamin A deficiency. However, more work is necessary to address the needs of certain target populations, especially those in remote areas. Additionally, millions continue to suffer from VAD to this day.

Studies have shown that the addition of vitamin A (or some form of vitamin A) to the diets of children below the age of 5 could reduce all mortality by 24–30 percent. Meanwhile, vitamin A availability could prevent 1.3–2.5 million of the nearly 8 million late-infancy and preschool-age child deaths annually in developing countries with the highest risk.

With rice being a staple food in many vitamin A-deficient communities, Golden Rice presents a unique opportunity for meeting the nutritional needs of these populations. A simulated analysis study by De Moura et.al (2016) suggests that beta carotene rice (i.e. Golden Rice) could improve vitamin A intake and could reduce the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency among women and children.

It is clear that multiple approaches are required in fighting VAD. An additional tool in the toolbox such as Golden Rice—one that can be seamlessly integrated into the everyday lifestyles of even the poorest sectors of society—can be a concrete, sustainable solution to ensure proper nutrition.

Who developed Golden Rice?

Emeritus Professor Ingo Potrykus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Prof. Peter Beyer of University of Freiburg, Germany, started the research on Golden Rice in 1982 as a Rockefeller Foundation initiative.

In 1992, after years of research, various groups came together in New York and decided to pursue the project, successfully causing beta carotene to be present in rice grains in 1999 after using genetic engineering to add genes from daffodil and a common soil bacterium to rice.

The inventors of Golden Rice partnered with Syngenta and other scientists, producing an improved version—which was the result of adding a gene from maize and the same soil microorganism—with a level of beta carotene content twenty times higher than the first version. To help combat VAD, they donated this new version to developing countries (including the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Indonesia) through the Golden Rice Network in 2004.

When will Golden Rice be available to farmers and consumers?

With the release of the biosafety permit for the commercial propagation of Golden Rice in July 2021, DA-PhilRice, in collaboration with IRRI and other partners, are taking the step towards bringing the vitamin A-enhanced rice to farmers through the production of seeds. It will require 3-4 cropping seasons to produce sufficient supply of seeds for commercial farm cultivation.

A limited amount of seeds have been distributed for the pilot-scale deployment of Golden Rice for planting during Wet Season 2022. The produced seeds will then be deployed and made available in other target areas with high prevalence of vitamin A deficiency by the last quarter of 2023. Seed production work led by DA-PhilRice will continue to ensure that enough seeds are available for on farm cultivation.

Further information on the initial distribution of Golden Rice seeds and grains in the Philippines can be found in the deployment section of the DA-PhilRice Golden Rice FAQs .

I read about an alleged negative effect of Golden Rice that was not discussed in this FAQ. Can you clarify it for me?

Yes. This FAQ page answers the most common questions about Golden Rice, but the science and data on Golden Rice are open to the public, in order to ensure transparency. For more information, please send an email to [email protected] , [email protected] (for questions specific to the Philippines), or [email protected] (for questions specific to Bangladesh).

Where can I find the biosafety data on Golden Rice?

Information on the safety and performance of GR2E Golden Rice is publicly accessible in various formats. The regulatory safety studies and associated application files for 1) direct use as food, feed, or for processing (FFP) and 2) commercial propagation are downloadable on the DA-BPI Biotechnology Secretariat website.

Data on the nutrient composition and molecular characterization, and the agronomic properties of GR2E Golden Rice both in the Philippines and Bangladesh have been published in scientific literature:

Swamy et al, 2019. Compositional analysis of Genetically Engineered GR2E "Golden Rice" in Comparison to that of Conventional Rice.

Oliva et al, 2020. Molecular characterization and safety assessment of biofortified provitamin A rice.

Swamy et al, 2021. Development and characterization of GR2E Golden rice introgression lines.

Biswas et al, 2021. Development and Field Evaluation of Near-Isogenic Lines of GR2-EBRRI dhan 29 Golden Rice.

IEC materials summarizing these findings are also publicly available on the G olden Rice Communication Toolkit page.

For Consumers

What exactly is in golden rice does it contain new allergens or toxins.

The presence of beta carotene in GR2E Golden Rice is made possible via three newly expressed proteins (encoded information converted into proteins through genetic engineering). After fulfilling their functions, these proteins gradually diminish as the plants mature.

• ZmPSY1 from maize, which makes the first step in adding beta carotene to rice possible;
• CRTI from the Pantoea ananatis bacterium, which accelerates the creation of the precursor to beta carotene; and
• PMI from the Escherichia coli bacterium, normally found in the intestinal flora of humans and animals, which plays a crucial role in completing the overall process.

Based on an extensive “weight-of-evidence” assessment, these three proteins:

• Do not have any significant amino acid sequence similarity to proteins known to be toxic via oral exposure or to allergens (confirmed by bioinformatics studies);
• Rapidly degrade in the presence of simulated gastric fluid containing pepsin (confirmed by digestibility studies); and
• Demonstrate rapid inactivation at temperatures below those used for cooking or processing (confirmed by heat stability studies).

Additionally, oral toxicity testing of the CRTI and PMI proteins showed a lack of toxic effects, even at dosages thousands of times more than any realistically conceivable dietary exposure from consuming GR2E Golden Rice.

What this means is that the three proteins are highly unlikely to be toxic or produce allergic reactions in humans or animals. Furthermore, engineering GR2E Golden Rice does not alter the safety profile of conventional white rice, which is not considered a source of toxins or a common allergenic food.

How can you be sure that Golden Rice is safe to eat?

Aside from multiple tests confirming that the new proteins in Golden Rice are neither toxic nor allergenic, food safety-related studies have also shown that beta carotene in food is a safe source of vitamin A.

Golden Rice’s beta carotene content is the same as the kind found in other foods. Additionally, the body only converts beta carotene as needed; any excess is safely flushed out of the body.

Moreover, when taken as a whole, the data do not point to any potential health and safety concerns involving Golden Rice consumption. In fact, the data support the conclusion that Golden Rice is as safe as conventional rice types. Further proof of this is the fact that Golden Rice has passed the strict, meticulous safety assessment requirements of various regulating bodies worldwide.

Golden Rice is a genetically modified (GM) food. Are GM foods really safe to eat?

Yes. Golden Rice is safe to eat, just like other genetically engineered foods developed under strict regulation by experts.

Genetic engineering is simply a more precise method of breeding than conventional breeding. It makes it possible to accurately and effectively transfer a specific gene with a favorable trait (like additional nutrients or drought resistance in plant breeding) from one organism to another.

In the case of Golden Rice, it is impossible to use conventional breeding methods to achieve the desired level of beta carotene in the grain. Scientists know that rice plants do have the right mechanism for producing beta carotene; however, the pathway that makes it possible for beta carotene to be present in the grain itself is turned off. The two genes added via genetic engineering basically switch the pathway on.

Before any GM foods become available in the market, they must pass rigorous safety assessments and must not demonstrate a high likelihood of putting human health at risk. In the countries where GM foods have been approved, there have been no scientifically proven negative effects on human health due to consumption of GM foods. 

The May 2016 report of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, which was based on over 20 years’ worth of data across nearly 900 studies and publications on GMOs, attests that GM crops are safe.

Global health authorities (i.e. World Health Organization, American Medical Association, Royal Society of Medicine, etc.); scientific experts (i.e. American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Academies in many countries, International Council for Science, Pontifical Academy of Science, etc.); and government agencies (European Commission, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, US Food and Drug Administration, etc.) worldwide have also overwhelmingly endorsed the safety of GM foods. Moreover, in 2016, over 100 Nobel Prize winners signed a letter affirming the safety of Golden Rice and other GM foods, and rallying support for their adoption and distribution.

Will Golden Rice taste different from regular rice?

No, the beta carotene concentration present in Golden Rice is not expected to affect its taste. This will be confirmed before commercial release by sensory panels. Beta carotene is a nature-derived color additive; it affects the color, not the taste, of the foods it is added to. This is different from how colored rice dishes (such as paella and Java rice) don’t taste like regular white rice; that’s because of the ingredients used in preparing the dishes, and not the rice itself.

Will Golden Rice be more expensive than regular rice?

No, Golden Rice will not cost more than the white rice variety in which the trait will be introduced.

The cost of Golden Rice is expected to be similar or comparable to other rice varieties, because it is simply bred into rice varieties that farmers already plant, meaning it will not affect production cost. Furthermore, the inventors of the Golden Rice technology donated it for use in developing countries; there are no limitations (except export sale) on the use of Golden Rice harvest, which can be locally sold, or replanted by growers. As an inbred variety, farmers can save the Golden Rice seeds and use them again for the following planting season. As for vitamin A-deficient communities, a sustainable delivery program will be put into place for distributing Golden Rice after it gets all the necessary approvals.

Simply put, growers and consumers will not need to pay more for the extra nutrition—and those who need it the most will have easy access to it.

Have there been any unexpected changes in the nutrient content of Golden Rice?

None. Aside from the expected levels of beta-carotene and other provitamin A carotenoids in the grain, the composition of Golden Rice remains equivalent to conventional rice.

I read about a US FDA letter stating that the “concentration beta-carotene in GR2E rice is too low to warrant a nutrient content claim.” Does this mean that Golden Rice contains insufficient Vitamin A?

No. Consider the fact that Americans eat very little rice; on average, about 45g of dry rice per day. As Golden Rice is meant to be a complementary, food-based solution for communities whose staple food is rice (about 200 to 300g per day), it follows logic that American consumers would not benefit from Golden Rice as much as the average Filipino (who consumes 290g of rice daily) or Bangladeshi (where the average daily per capita consumption of rice is 367.19g).

For Farmers

Will i have to change the way i farm if i plant golden rice if i do, will those changes harm the environment.

No. Golden Rice is not expected to require any changes in farm management or cultivation practices. Everything about local cultivation practices currently followed for conventional rice varieties, including the application of fertilizer, crop protection products, and labor, are directly applicable to the cultivation of Golden Rice.

Will I have to spend more on pest control if I plant Golden Rice? Will it result in stronger pests (because it’s more nutritious than regular rice)?

No. Golden Rice does not have any modified or introduced resistance to insect pests or diseases. As a result, it is not expected to drive the evolution of resistant pest populations or require any changes in pest control practices.

Will I have to deal with more pests or new crop disease problems if I plant Golden Rice?

No. Based on observations from the 2017 boro season in Bangladesh, Golden Rice did not emerge as a preferred host for pest insects, nor did it exhibit any altered disease susceptibility.

Occurrences of pest and beneficial insect species were also observed in the Philippines during confined Golden Rice field tests. Again, Golden Rice was not seen as a preferred host for pest insects, nor did it cause any harmful effects on the prevalence of beneficial species. 

Will planting Golden Rice have any harmful effects on other rice varieties through cross-pollination or out-crossing? And can it make weeds a bigger problem?

No, Golden Rice is not likely to impact organic agriculture through cross-pollination.

• Cross-pollination in rice is rare if plants are separated by a short distance of a few feet or meters.
• Cross-pollination is uncommon in rice, unless all the rice plants are flowering at the same time.
• Rice pollen is normally viable for only a few minutes after flowering.

In other words, organically-grown rice will not cross-pollinate naturally with other cultivated rice, unless they are growing close together and flowering at the same time.

Additionally, the beta carotene-producing trait in Golden Rice is not intended to affect the growth-related characteristics of rice. It will also not make it any more or less viable than conventional varieties.

Confined field tests of Golden Rice at multiple locations in both Bangladesh and the Philippines have confirmed that there were no unintended or unexpected changes in the characteristics of rice concerning seedling germination and vigour, plant growth and morphology, reproductive characteristics, and susceptibility to pests and diseases resulting from genetic engineering.

Golden Rice can co-exist with organic agriculture and other production systems, and will not make any other species more invasive or less viable.

Is there any difference in the ability of pollen from Golden Rice to live, grow, or develop?

No, there are no unintended effects on Golden Rice’s pollen viability due to genetic engineering.

Based on comparisons of pollen morphology and viability between GR2E Golden Rice and conventional rice, there are no significant differences in pollen viability or appearance.

Is Golden Rice expected to produce more or less grains than other rice varieties?

No. Results of recently conducted tests have shown that Golden Rice has no unintended effects on yield or grain quality. Aside from the beta carotene content of the grain, Golden Rice is basically the same as conventional rice varieties.   Additionally, based on germination tests conducted under two different temperature regimes, genetic engineering did not result in any unintended changes that could affect Golden Rice’s seedling development or environmental growth.

Golden Rice Status and Updates

What is the status of the golden rice project.

Golden Rice received positive food safety evaluations from Food Standards Australia New Zealand, Health Canada, and the United States Food and Drug Administration in 2018, and from the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Plant Industry in 2019. These agencies concur that Golden Rice is as safe as ordinary rice with the added benefit of beta-carotene in its grain. 

In 2021, the Philippines became the first country to approve Golden Rice for commercial propagation. Golden Rice is registered with the National Seed Industry Council as NSIC 2022 Rc 682 GR2E, or Malusog-1. Pilot-scale deployment is ongoing, with limited seeds distributed for planting in target provinces. Breeders at IRRI and DA-PhilRice continue to breed the beta-carotene producing Golden Rice trait into a range of popular inbred local rice varieties readily acceptable by farmers and consumers.

In Bangladesh, the application for environmental and food safety assessment of GR2E BRRI dhan29 Golden Rice was lodged with the Ministry of Agriculture on 26 November 2017 and the Ministry of Environment and Forest on 04 December 2017. This is a necessary step for inclusion in the National Seed Board rice variety listing. It is currently undergoing review by Bangladesh’s Biosafety Core Committee.

Where can I find country-specific information on Golden Rice?

For further information on Golden Rice in the Philippines, please visit the DA-PhilRice Golden Rice FAQs . A Bangla-language FAQ has also been developed by BRRI.

There have been reports that Golden Rice field trials resulted in stunted plants and reduced grain yield. Is this true?

Yes, but this was for an earlier version (or “event”) of Golden Rice called GR2R. This prompted the use of the G2RE event, which retains all the nutritional and agronomic characteristics of conventional rice.

This outdated piece of information comes from multilocation trials conducted in 2012-2013, which used GR2R, which was the most advanced event of Golden Rice at the time. Results showed that while the target level of beta carotene in the grain was attained, the average yield was lower than that of comparable local varieties. Thus, a decision was reached to use more promising events such as GR2E to advance the development of Golden Rice.

From October 2014 to July 2017, a series of confined field tests were successfully conducted at IRRI and PhilRice in the Philippines, and at five different locations within Bangladesh. The results showed that there were no unintended effects of the GR2E event on agronomic performance, yield, and grain quality, nor were there any observed differences for their pest and disease reactions. Additionally, besides the intended production of beta carotene in the grain, Golden Rice maintained all other nutritional components of conventional rice.

I first heard about Golden Rice in 2000. Why has Golden Rice taken this long to develop?

As with any type of research project done properly—especially when it is meant to have a significant impact on human health, nutrition, and safety—Golden Rice must pass all required tests and be approved by regulators before it could be released to the public.

Despite advances in modern biotechnology, the process of genetic modification normally takes many years. With each test in the sequence typically serving as a precursor before moving to the next step, the entire testing process, including meeting the requirements for moving from phase to phase, takes a long time to complete.

When Golden Rice made headlines in 1999, it was in its “proof of concept” phase. The process of researching and developing Golden Rice is rigorous, complex, and meticulous, and under no circumstances must it be rushed. For instance, climate-smart, flood-tolerant rice, which millions of farmers can now access, took more than two decades to develop.

If anything, this long, rigorous process of research, testing, and approval should be a source of assurance to the public—especially to the people who need a sustainable nutrient deficiency solution like this—that when it becomes commercially available, Golden Rice will be safe for consumption and effective in fighting VAD.

What can I do to support the Golden Rice project?

Follow the Golden Rice Project on Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram  for Philippine updates

We are grateful for your support, and we commend you for wanting to make this life-changing project available for public consumption. Your voice on this matter can—and will—make a huge difference.

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• Am J Clin Nutr

Golden Rice is an effective source of vitamin A 1, 2, 3, 4

Background: Genetically engineered “Golden Rice” contains up to 35 μ g β -carotene per gram of rice. It is important to determine the vitamin A equivalency of Golden Rice β -carotene to project the potential effect of this biofortified grain in rice-consuming populations that commonly exhibit low vitamin A status.

Objective: The objective was to determine the vitamin A value of intrinsically labeled dietary Golden Rice in humans.

Design: Golden Rice plants were grown hydroponically with heavy water (deuterium oxide) to generate deuterium-labeled [ 2 H] β -carotene in the rice grains. Golden Rice servings of 65–98 g (130–200 g cooked rice) containing 0.99–1.53 mg β -carotene were fed to 5 healthy adult volunteers (3 women and 2 men) with 10 g butter. A reference dose of [ 13 C 10 ]retinyl acetate (0.4–1.0 mg) in oil was given to each volunteer 1 wk before ingestion of the Golden Rice dose. Blood samples were collected over 36 d.

Results: Our results showed that the mean (±SD) area under the curve for the total serum response to [ 2 H]retinol was 39.9 ± 20.7 μ g·d after the Golden Rice dose. Compared with that of the [ 13 C 10 ]retinyl acetate reference dose (84.7 ± 34.6 μ g·d), Golden Rice β -carotene provided 0.24–0.94 mg retinol. Thus, the conversion factor of Golden Rice β -carotene to retinol is 3.8 ± 1.7 to 1 with a range of 1.9–6.4 to 1 by weight, or 2.0 ± 0.9 to 1 with a range of 1.0–3.4 to 1 by moles.

Conclusion: β -Carotene derived from Golden Rice is effectively converted to vitamin A in humans. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as {"type":"clinical-trial","attrs":{"text":"NCT00680355","term_id":"NCT00680355"}} NCT00680355 .

INTRODUCTION

The intake of vitamin A provides humans with an important nutrient for vision, growth, reproduction, cellular differentiation and proliferation, and integrity of the immune system. Vitamin A deficiency can result in visual or ocular malfunctions such as night blindness and xerophthalmia ( 1 ) and can reduce immune responsiveness ( 2 ), which can result in an increased incidence or severity of respiratory infections, gastrointestinal infections ( 3 ), and measles ( 4 ). Vitamin A can be obtained from food, either as preformed vitamin A in animal products (eg, eggs and dairy products) or as provitamin A carotenoids, mainly β -carotene in plant products (eg, dark-green leafy vegetables and fruit).

Clinical and subclinical vitamin A deficiency is still a problem, affecting 250 million schoolchildren worldwide ( 5 , 6 ). To prevent clinical vitamin A deficiency in developing countries, chemically synthesized vitamin A supplements have been distributed periodically to deficient populations ( 7 – 9 ). This has been shown to be an efficient and generally safe strategy. However, supplementation programs with a periodic mass distribution have been difficult to sustain because of high distribution costs. Recently, food-based interventions to increase the availability of provitamin A–rich foods and their consumption have been suggested as a realistic and sustainable alternative to overcome vitamin A deficiency globally ( 10 ). However, the efficacy of carotenoid-rich foods in the prevention of vitamin A deficiency has been questioned in several recent studies, which reported little or no nutritional benefit of vitamin A from the increased consumption of dark-green or yellow vegetables ( 11 , 12 ). Recently, studies have shown that the equivalency of vegetable provitamin A carotenoids to vitamin A is in the range of 10–27 μ g all-trans β -carotene to 1 μ g retinol activity ( 13 – 16 ). These studies showed that food matrices greatly affect the bioavailability of vitamin A and carotenoids.

In recent years, scientists have introduced the biosynthetic pathway for provitamin A carotenoids into staple foods, including genetically engineered Golden Rice, which contains 1.6–35 μ g β -carotene per gram of dry rice. Golden Rice–1, which was transformed with a construct containing a phytoene synthase gene from daffodil, contains 1.6 μ g carotenoids (0.8 μ g β -carotene) per gram of dry rice ( 17 ). Golden Rice–2 was transformed with a construct containing a phytoene synthase gene from maize and contains up to 35 μ g β -carotene per gram of dry rice ( 18 ). Because the vitamin A equivalency of various foods and supplements varies from 2 μ g β -carotene to 1 μ g retinol (when provided as a β -carotene supplement in oil) to 27 μ g β -carotene to 1 μ g retinol (when provided as vegetable β -carotene) ( 11 , 13 ), and this equivalency is matrix dependent, it is important to determine the vitamin A equivalency of β -carotene from Golden Rice. This information is critical for the purpose of designing informed, food-based nutritional strategies for rice-eating regions throughout the world where vitamin A deficiency is common. Because vitamin A is homeostatically regulated in the circulation of healthy subjects and it is impossible to distinguish the newly formed vitamin A from endogenous vitamin A ( 19 ), we chose intrinsic labeling of the provitamin A carotene as the optimal approach to determine its vitamin A equivalence. We produced intrinsically labeled Golden Rice, fed the rice to healthy volunteers, and used an isotope reference method to determine the conversion factor of Golden Rice β -carotene to vitamin A.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Production of intrinsically labeled golden rice.

Rice seeds were imbibed and germinated on cheesecloth suspended over distilled water. After 4 d, seedlings were planted in trays suspended over 20-L tubs of nutrient solution containing the following macronutrients: KNO 3 , 1 mmol/L; KH 2 PO 4 , 1 mmol/L; Ca(NO 3 ) 2 , 1 mmol/L; MgSO 4 , 1 mmol/L; K 2 SiO 4 , 0.1 mmol/L; CaCl 2 , 25 μ mol/L; H 3 BO 3 , 25 μ mol/L; MnSO 4 , 2 μ mol/L; ZnSO 4 , 2 μ mol/L; CuSO 4 , 0.5 μ mol/L; H 2 MoO 4 , 0.5 μ mol/L; and NiSO 4 , 0.1 μ mol/L. No deuterium oxide was added. Iron was added in chelated form as Fe(III)HEDTA ( N -hydroxyethyl-ethylenediamine-triacetic acid) at 20 μ mol/L. MES buffer (adjusted with potassium hydroxide) was added at 2 mmol/L to maintain the nutrient solution pH between 5.4 and 5.8. Plants were maintained on this solution until flowering (≈3.5 mo after planting) in a greenhouse in Houston, TX; the nutrient solution was topped off, as needed, with a refill solution containing the same nutrients as above, but without additional MES buffer or K 2 SiO 4 . A complete change-out of the solution (using starting solution) was performed at 6-wk intervals. Approximately 7 d after flowering, the plants were transferred to a new nutrient solution containing 23 atom% 2 H 2 O, 20 μ mol/L Fe(III)HEDTA, 2 mmol/L MES buffer, and the following macronutrients: KNO 3 , 5 mmol/L; KH 2 PO 4 , 2 mmol/L; Ca(NO 3 ) 2 , 2 mmol/L; MgSO 4 , 1 mmol/L; K 2 SiO 4 , 0.1 mmol/L; CaCl 2 , 25 μ mol/L; H 3 BO 3 , 25 μ mol/L; MnSO 4 , 2 μ mol/L; ZnSO 4 , 2 μ mol/L; CuSO 4 , 0.5 μ mol/L; H 2 MoO 4 , 0.5 μ mol/L; and NiSO 4 , 0.1 μ mol/L. The 23 atom% 2 H 2 O allowed us to achieve a target peak enrichment of M + 9 [original mass of β -carotene ( M ) plus 9 atoms of 2 H] for the Golden Rice β -carotene (determined empirically in pilot studies). At this time, plants were also placed in a clear plastic-walled labeling system ( Figure 1 ), which maintained an elevated 2 H 2 O concentration in the gas atmosphere surrounding the plants and panicles. Plants were maintained on this media, with the solution topped off as needed (using the same 2 H 2 O solution) until the panicles had matured (≈3 wk later). During this labeling period, the temperature within the labeling system was maintained between 26 and 31°C, and the relative humidity was maintained between 45% and 55%. At maturity, whole panicles were collected and stored at −20°C until further processing. For processing, seeds were de-hulled with an Impeller Husker (model FC2K; Yamamoto Co, Ltd, Yamagata-ken, Japan); seeds were subsequently polished in small batches for 30 s with an electric grain polisher (model “Pearlest;” Kett Electric Laboratory, Tokyo, Japan). Polished seeds were stored at −80°C until shipped to Boston, where they were cooked and analyzed before the clinical studies.

Photograph of the labeling chamber (A) and system components used to produce polished Golden Rice-2 (B). Components of the labeling system: 1, Golden Rice-2 in deuterated nutrient solution at seed fill stage; 2, carbon dioxide sensor; 3, tower fan for air mixing; 4, air conditioning unit; 5, dehumidifier; 6, collection tub for transpired heavy water from plants (collected from dehumidifier); 7, carbon dioxide supply; 8, water-free air.

Rice preparation

The rice was cooked by using a rice cooker (SR-G18FG; Panasonic, Chachoengsao, Thailand) by adding water in a quantity of 150% weight of the rice. The rice was cooked for 30 min. Our analysis showed that the total amount of Golden Rice β -carotene in the dose was the same before and after it was cooked (0.99 or 1.53 mg β -carotene in a dose). The cooked rice was divided into portions (130 g cooked rice containing 0.99 mg β -carotene or 200 g cooked rice containing 1.53 mg β -carotene) and kept at −15°C until served within 1–3 mo. On the day of feeding, the rice was brought to room temperature and then heated with a microwave oven [60 s by using a Panasonic NN-Sensor 953 (Genius) 1350-W microwave oven, 2.2 cubic feet capacity].

Volunteers and study design

The study protocol was approved by the Tufts Medical Center Institutional Review Board. Persons who had not taken vitamin A or β -carotene supplements within the past month and who were not disqualified based on several exclusion criteria were eligible to become study volunteers. Potential subjects were accepted into the study if they had none of the following conditions: severe or symptomatic cardiac disease or hypertension; history of bleeding disorders; chronic history of gastric, intestinal, liver, pancreatic, or renal disease; any portion of the stomach or the intestine removed (other than an appendectomy); history of intestinal obstruction, malabsorption, or use of antacid drugs; cancer (active or use of medications for a history of cancer treatment within the past 5 y); history of chronic alcoholism; a convulsive disorder; or abnormal results in screening blood or urine samples. Five volunteers (2 men and 3 women) from the Boston area were admitted to participate in the study after they were interviewed and signed the Informed Consent Form for the study.

The full study for each volunteer lasted 36 d to draw several blood samples and to study blood response curves. On day 1 of the study, the volunteers consumed [ 13 C 10 ]retinyl acetate ( M retinol + 10) in an oil capsule as a reference dose. We first tested the use of 0.43 mg [ 13 C 10 ]retinyl acetate as a reference dose in one of the subjects. Subsequently, we used 0.99 mg [ 13 C 10 ]retinyl acetate as the reference dose for the other 4 volunteers to ensure successful detection of labeled retinol in each volunteer, even those with a higher body mass. The [ 13 C 10 ]retinyl retinyl acetate in an oil capsule was given together with 200 g cooked white rice, 10 g butter, 50 g peeled cucumbers, 0.2 g salt, 5 g vinegar, and a 500-mL bottle of water at breakfast (time 0). The total calorie content of the meal was ≈450 kcal (23% from fat). A second standardized meal (lunch) was eaten by all volunteers 4 h after the breakfast meal; this second meal contained 60 g turkey meat, 50 g white bread, 20 g roasted cashew, and 100 g cucumber (peeled) salad with 15 g corn oil and 5 g vinegar (total energy: 600 kcal, 40% from fat). On day 8 of the study, the volunteers consumed the same breakfast meal as on day 1, but 200 g white rice was replaced with labeled Golden Rice (either 130 g cooked Golden Rice together with 70 g cooked white rice containing 0.99 mg β -carotene or 200 g cooked Golden Rice containing 1.53 mg β -carotene). Also on day 8, the standardized lunch (as above) was eaten by all of the volunteers 4 h after the breakfast meal. The amount of Golden Rice in the breakfast meal varied because we were trying to study as many subjects as possible with a limited amount of intrinsically labeled rice. Our results showed that our method can effectively assess the vitamin A equivalency of β -carotene doses as low as 1 mg in rice.

A total of 30 serum samples (10 mL each) were obtained from each subject at the following time points: day 1 at 0 (just before the breakfast dose), 5, 8, 11, and 13 h (after the dose); day 2 at 0 (24 h after the dose taken before the day 2 breakfast), 5, and 11 h (after the day 2 breakfast); day 3 at 0 (48 h after the dose taken and before the day 3 breakfast) and 11 h (after the day 3 breakfast); days 4, 6, and 7 at 0 h (before each day's breakfast); day 8 at 0 (before the Golden Rice breakfast dose), 5, 8, 11, and 13 h (after the Golden Rice dose taken); day 9 at 0 (24 h after the dose taken and before the day 9 breakfast), 5, and 11 h (after the breakfast); day 10 at 0 (48 h after the dose taken and before the day 10 breakfast) and 11 h (after the day's breakfast); days 11, 13, 15, 19, 22, 29, and 36 at 0 h (before each day's breakfast) ( Figure 2 ). Fasting serum samples were collected at the 0-h time points. The serum samples were kept at −70°C until analyzed. The retinol ( M retinol + 10) derived from the [ 13 C 10 ]retinyl acetate dose, the retinol ( M retinol + 5) formed from the labeled Golden Rice β -carotene, and the intact Golden Rice β -carotene ( M + 9) were followed in all samples up until the end of the study.

Experimental design for the Golden Rice human study. Three sets of dashed lines are used to amplify the overall time period to progressively larger scales. The first order (upper scale) includes the entire 36-d study and sampling period. The second order (middle scale) represents days 1–15 of more frequent blood sampling. Each cell on the horizontal time axis represents a 24-h period, with the division line representing the fasting blood collection time (0 h). The cells in black represent days 1 and 8, the days on which the tracers were ingested. The third order (lower scale) is common for these 2 dosing and high-multiple blood-sampling days (days 1 and 8), with each cell on the time axis representing 1 h. The 0 time represents the first blood sampling of the day, and all other numbers represent the times of subsequent sampling (in h) relative to the time of first sampling. The anchor symbols represent the oral dosing of the tracer. The arrows indicate the times at which blood samples were collected. d, day in the study; h, hour after study dose or after fasting blood sample, RAc, retinyl acetate.

[ 13 C 10 ]Vitamin A as an isotope reference

To quantify the amount of vitamin A formed from the Golden Rice β -carotene, a known amount of vitamin A that is differently labeled can be used as a reference dose. We used 1 mg [ 13 C 10 ]vitamin A [in the present study: M retinol = retinol – H 2 O = m / z (mass/charge, a unit for mass spectrometry) 268, M [ 13 C 10 ]retinol = m / z 268 + 10 = m / z 278] in an oil capsule as a reference dose given 1 wk before the Golden Rice meal. Our initial test showed that our method can trace the vitamin A body response after ingestion of 0.43 mg [ 13 C 10 ]vitamin A—a physiologic dose.

Blood sample analysis

An HPLC instrument equipped with a C 18 column was used to separate the serum retinol ( 20 ). The fractions containing retinol in the HPLC eluent were collected individually and derivatized for gas chromatography/electron capture negative chemical ionization–mass spectrometry (GC/ECNCI-MS) ( 21 ) to measure retinol enrichment from the reference vitamin A dose ( M retinol + 10 = m / z 278) or Golden Rice β -carotene ( M retinol + 5 = m / z 273) dose. The total enrichment of labeled retinol was determined by the evaluation of negative ions at M retinol [ m / z 268–270 ( 13 C 0 − 13 C 2 )], M retinol + 5 [ m / z 273–277 ( 2 H 5 – 2 H 9 )], and M retinol + 10 [ m / z 278–280 ( 13 C 10 – 13 C 12 )]. The whole enrichment of the retinol from the Golden Rice β -carotene was calculated as 2 times the sum of the enrichment of M retinol + 5, M retinol + 6, M retinol + 7, M retinol + 8, and M retinol + 9 based on the assumption of the symmetric distribution of the labeled Golden Rice β -carotene.

Concentrations of serum carotenoids and retinoids were determined using HPLC equipped with a C30 column ( 22 ). For enrichment of intact β -carotene, liquid chromatography/atmospheric pressure chemical ionization-mass spectrometry ( 23 ) was used to determine the absorption of intact β -carotene after consumption of the cooked Golden Rice.

Areas under the curve of labeled retinol or β -carotene in the serum

Total serum responses (nmol) to the [ 2 H] β -carotene dose and the [ 13 C 10 ]retinyl acetate dose were determined by multiplying the total serum volume (0.0435 L/kg body wt) by the concentration of [ 2 H] β -carotene and [ 2 H]retinol and [ 13 C 10 ]retinol in the circulation (nmol/L, determined for each time point of serum sampling by adding all of the enrichment masses). Areas under the curve (AUCs) for serum labeled retinol or β -carotene responses (in nmol·d) after the [ 2 H] β -carotene dose and the [ 13 C 10 ]retinyl acetate dose were calculated by using the curves of total serum responses (in nmol; y axis) compared with time (in d; x axis) via Integral-Curve of Kaleidagraph (Synergy Software, Reading, PA). The conversion of the AUC unit from nmol·d to μ g·d was done by using M retinol = 291 for [ 2 H 5 ]retinol and M = 296 for [ 2 H 10 ]retinol. Because of the 7-d delay in the administration of the Golden Rice dose, the AUCs were calculated for 21 d after each labeled tracer.

Retinol equivalence calculations

The AUC of serum [ 2 H]retinol response (from the labeled Golden Rice) was compared with the AUC of the vitamin A reference dose (0.4–1.0 mg [ 13 C 10 ]retinyl acetate; molecular mass = 336). The amount of 2 H retinol was calculated as follows:

Conversion factor calculations

The amount of a given oral dose of Golden Rice β -carotene (0.99–1.53 mg) compared with the amount of vitamin A derived from the β -carotene dose was defined as the β -carotene to vitamin A conversion factor. Thus, the conversion factor of Golden Rice β -carotene (calculated β -carotene from all -trans β - carotene plus one-half of all other provitamin A carotenoids) to vitamin A was determined as follows:

where 536 is the molecular mass of β -carotene, and 286 is the molecular mass of retinol.

Statistical analyses

Statistical analyses was performed to assess the significance of differences between vitamin A conversion factors by sex and to determine correlations between conversion factors and the BMI of each subject. Systat version 10.2 (Systat Software Inc) was used for data analysis.

Confirmation of intrinsically labeled Golden Rice with enriched β -carotene

We grew Golden Rice hydroponically with mineral nutrients and introduced 23 atom% heavy water ( 2 H 2 O) to the hydroponic medium after flowering ( Figure 1 ) to intrinsically label the Golden Rice β -carotene with deuterium ( 2 H). Our HPLC analysis showed that, in the grains, all-trans β -carotene was the dominant carotenoid (≈20 μ g β -carotene in a gram of dry rice) together with small amounts of lutein, anhydrolutein, zeaxanthin, cryptoxanthin, 13- cis β -carotene, and 9- cis β -carotene ( Figure 3 ). With this labeling method, the intrinsically labeled Golden Rice β -carotene showed a protonated molecule of m / z of M β c + H + = 536 + 1 (representing unlabeled β -carotene) and a range of isotopomers with the most abundant showing an enrichment of 9 deuterium at M enrich- β c = M β c + H + + 9 mass units ( Figure 4 ) as analyzed by using the liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry with a positive atmospheric pressure chemical ionization interface (the total m / z was M β c + 9 + H + = 536 + 9 + 1 = m / z 546) ( 23 ). This labeled Golden Rice β -carotene produces retinol with a most abundant peak mass at the ionized retinol plus 5 mass units derived from deuterium minus water (the result of ionization in the mass ionization chamber).

Chromatogram of Golden Rice carotenoids. Each labeled chromatographic peak represents an identified carotenoid compound: 1, lutein; 2, anhydrolutein; 3, zeaxanthin; 4, cryptoxanthin; 5, 13- cis β -carotene; 6, all - trans β -carotene; 7, 9- cis β -carotene.

Deuterium enrichment profile of Golden Rice β -carotene analyzed by liquid chromatography/atmospheric pressure chemical ionization-mass spectrometry (positive ion mode). Hydroponic labeling does not produce uniform enrichment, but rather a range of isotopomers. The vertical axis represents the signal intensity. The horizontal axis represents the mass ( M + H + = mass plus hydrogen atom with positive charge) of the isotopomers. Unlabeled β -carotene is shown with a mass of 537. The most abundant isotopomer of labeled β -carotene (with 9 deuterium atoms) is represented by an m/z of 546. The enrichment of Golden Rice β -carotene is 86%.

Characteristics of volunteers

Five healthy nonsmokers (2 men and 3 women; age: 41–70 y; BMI: 22–29) were recruited as study volunteers. The characteristics of these subjects are presented in Table 1 . Concentrations of carotenoids and retinoids in serum samples collected at baseline and analyzed by using HPLC ( 22 ) are presented in Table 2 . These data showed that the vitamin A and carotenoid concentrations of the volunteers were in the normal range.

Characteristics of the 5 study subjects

Carotenoid and retinol concentrations in the serum of each subject at the beginning of the study 1

Blood response to a Golden Rice meal

Retinols labeled at M retinol + 5 or M retinol + 10 ( M retinol = m / z 268, representing unlabeled endogenous retinol) were detected in serum extracts, as shown in the middle and bottom panels of Figure 5 . The mass distribution of circulating retinol at baseline (day 1 at 0 h before the reference dose; top panel), the enrichment of M retinol + 10 = m / z 278 from the reference dose [ 13 C]retinyl acetate (day 1 at 13 h after the dose; middle panel), and the enrichment of M retinol + 5 = m / z 273 and M retinol + 10 = m / z 278 retinol (day 9 at 0 or 24 h after the Golden Rice meal; bottom panel) are shown in the figure. The kinetic responses of labeled M retinol + 5 = m / z 273 and M retinol + 10 = m / z 278 retinol up to 32 d from one subject are presented in Figure 6 .

Enrichment mass spectrometric profile of serum retinol samples collected from one subject. Top panel: profile obtained before ingestion of the labeled dose; data are an average of 11.3–11.6 min on the gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC/MS) chromatogram for a sample collected on day 1, 0 h. Middle panel: profile obtained after ingestion of the reference dose; data are an average of 13.7–13.8 min on the GC/MS chromatogram for a sample collected on day 1, 13 h after the [ 13 C 10 ]retinyl acetate dose. Bottom panel: profile obtained after ingestion of the labeled Golden Rice dose; data are an average of 11.3–11.6 min on the GC/MS chromatogram for a sample collected on day 9, 24 h after the Golden Rice meal. Arrows indicate signal intensities that were greater than the abundance values on the y axis.

Calculated labeled retinol species in the circulation of a representative volunteer, throughout the course of the study, after consumption of [ 13 C 10 ]retinyl acetate on day 1 and after a deuterium-labeled Golden Rice β -carotene dose on day 8.

The responses of the volunteers who consumed a reference dose on day 1 and a labeled Golden Rice dose (130 or 200 g cooked weight containing 0.99 or 1.53 mg labeled β -carotene, respectively) on day 8, together with 10 g butter, are presented in Table 3 .

Subject responses to a reference dose of [ 13 C 10 ]retinyl acetate and a Golden Rice meal with [ 2 H 9 ] β -carotene 1

For Golden Rice β -carotene, analysis of serum samples by liquid chromatography/atmospheric pressure chemical ionization-mass spectrometry ( 23 ) showed that the labeled β -carotene was absorbed intact after consumption of the cooked Golden Rice. Serum response kinetics of intact β -carotene are presented in Figure 7 .

Serial measurements of deuterium-labeled β -carotene in the circulation of a representative volunteer. Values are presented for the 25 d of monitoring after the oral dose of labeled Golden Rice.

Conversion factor of Golden Rice β -carotene to vitamin A

The AUC response of vitamin A ( M retinol + 5) formed from the dose of labeled Golden Rice β -carotene was compared with the AUC of the reference [ 13 C 10 ]vitamin A, up to 21 d ( Table 3 ). The Golden Rice containing 0.99 mg β -carotene provided 0.24–0.51 mg retinol, and the Golden Rice containing 1.53 mg β -carotene provided 0.24–0.94 mg retinol. It should be noted that at these physiologic doses (0.99–1.53 mg β -carotene), it is unlikely that the differences in dose would influence the outcome of retinol equivalence per milligram of β -carotene. Acknowledging that we had a limited number of subjects ( n = 5), statistical analysis showed that there was no difference in the calculated conversion factors between subjects taking 0.99 or 1.53 mg Golden Rice β -carotene. Altogether, our results show that the conversion factor of Golden Rice β -carotene to retinol is 3.8 ± 1.7 (mean ± SD) to 1 with a range of 1.9–6.4 to 1 by weight, or 2.0 ± 0.9 to 1 with a range of 1.0–3.4 to 1 by mol, as presented in Table 3 . The conversion factors between men ( n = 2) and women ( n = 3) were not different. In addition, in these 5 subjects, there was no correlation between the conversion factors and BMIs.

Golden Rice is a bioengineered crop with yellow-colored endosperm that contains β -carotene (provitamin A). To produce Golden Rice, 2 enzymes are introduced into the endosperm [phytoene synthase (psy) and phytoene desaturase (crtl)] via an endosperm-specific glutelin (Gtl) promoter ( 15 ), to establish a β -carotene biosynthetic pathway in the rice grains. This is the first study on the vitamin A value of Golden Rice in humans, and our analysis showed a very efficient bioconversion of β -carotene to vitamin A ( Table 3 ). Using a conversion factor in which 3.8 μ g Golden Rice β -carotene provides 1 μ g retinol, along with the level of Golden Rice β -carotene being 20–30 μ g/g uncooked rice, we project that 100 g uncooked rice provides 500–800 μ g retinol. This represents 80–100% of the estimated average requirement (EAR) for men and women and 55–70% of the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA, derived from the EAR) for men and women, as set by the US National Academy of Science ( 24 ). In the United States, the EAR and RDA for vitamin A were set based on the amount needed to provide 4 mo of vitamin A storage in the body. For children, additional study of Golden Rice β -carotene conversion to retinol is needed. However, we speculate that 50 g uncooked Golden Rice, which is a reasonable serving size for children aged 4–8 y in rice-eating regions, who eat ≈130–200 g rice/d ( 25 ), would be able to provide >90% of vitamin A EAR (275 μ g retinol/d) or >60% of the RDA (400 μ g retinol/d) ( 24 ).

In this study, we used a combination of state-of-the-art approaches to determine the vitamin A equivalence of Golden Rice in humans. Plants were grown hydroponically in heavy water to intrinsically label Golden Rice β -carotene with deuterium. The subjects were fed both the labeled rice and a reference dose of differently labeled retinol. Sensitive mass spectrometry approaches were used to analyze both β -carotene and retinol enrichment in serum with stable isotope labeling, which allowed us to easily discern Golden Rice and reference dose molecules from preexisting, endogenous β -carotene and retinol. Our subsequent results, based on a small number of US volunteers, showed the effective conversion of Golden Rice β -carotene, even though all individuals were of normal vitamin A status. Whether this conversion efficiency is a good approximation for rice-eating populations with marginal-to-severe vitamin A deficiency, or perhaps is a conservative underestimate, has yet to be determined. To provide information for public health or public policy purposes, a larger long-term trial targeting individuals with marginal vitamin A status is needed. For instance, an isotope dilution approach could be used to evaluate changes in whole-body vitamin A stores ( 26 ) after an extended feeding period of Golden Rice with incorporation of the rice into daily diets.

The food matrix plays an important role in determining the bioavailability of vitamin A from provitamin A carotenoids in a particular food. Rice has a simple and easily digestible food matrix, which allows for a high bioavailability and bioconversion of β -carotene to vitamin A. Similarly, spirulina, with its simple food matrix, has also shown a highly efficient conversion factor for β -carotene to vitamin A of 4.5 to 1 by weight in humans ( 27 ). To combat vitamin A deficiency, consumption of locally available vegetables, fruit, and other plant foods, such as algae products, should be encouraged. Each of these plant foods can contribute to vitamin A nutrition, although the conversion of the provitamin A carotenoids within them may not be equivalent. Conversion factors for provitamin A carotenoids from various plants have been reported as 12 to 1 for fruit ( 14 , 28 ), 13 to 1 for sweet potato ( 15 ), 15 to 1 for carrots ( 16 ), and 10 to 1 ( 15 ), 21 to 1 ( 16 ), 26 to 1 ( 14 ), 27 to 1 ( 13 ), and 28 to 1 ( 28 ) for green leafy vegetables. Thus, comparatively speaking, Golden Rice has a very favorable conversion ratio.

It should be noted that we closely monitored our subjects for any possible adverse effects after the consumption of Golden Rice and found no evidence of any problems, including allergic reactions or gastrointestinal disturbance. Although this attests to the probable safety of Golden Rice, we acknowledge that only a single serving was fed to each study subject. A much longer exposure with a larger cumulative consumption of Golden Rice would be needed to make definitive assertions regarding the inherent safety of this food for human use.

Staple foods should not only provide energy but also nutrients in a bioavailable form. Thus, Golden Rice may be a cost-effective staple food for combating vitamin A deficiency in rice-eating populations ( 29 ). Other provitamin A–containing staple foods, such as corn, cassava, sweet potato, and sorghum should be developed to serve other vitamin A–deficient populations with different food cultures.

Acknowledgments

We thank the Metabolic Research Unit of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging for recruiting our volunteers and for performing the human study procedures and David Dworak and Chee-Ming Li of the USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center for helping to label and produce the Golden Rice.

The authors' responsibilities were as follows—GT: designed the study, supervised the data collection, analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript; JQ: collected and analyzed the samples; GGD: supervised the mass spectrometric analysis and revised the manuscript; RMR: supervised the human study as the study physician and revised the manuscript; and MAG: designed the production methods for the labeled Golden Rice, harvested the labeled Golden Rice for the study, and revised the manuscript. No financial benefit was obtained from this research study.

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Golden Rice is part of the solution

Children could die because of greenpeace’s golden rice activism, article by mark lynas, published in the spectator on 24 april 2024.

In April this year (2024), Greenpeace Southeast Asia and other NGOs managed to stop the cultivation and use of vitamin A-enhanced rice in the Philippines, after the country’s court of appeal ruled in their favour.

In doing so, Greenpeace’s brings the whole environmental movement into disrepute, having blocked a multi-year, international, publicly-funded effort to save the lives and the eyesight of millions of children in some of the world’s poorest countries where rice is the main staple.

It has already been 20 years since the first Golden Rice trials took place, but its rollout in Asia has been frustrated by ongoing protests and meritless court injunctions by anti-GMO activist groups. These activists continue to spread myths and misinformation while ignoring decades of scientific peer-reviewed research showing conclusively that genetically-engineered crops and foods are safe.

The court decision means that farmers currently growing Golden Rice across the country will have to destroy their crops. The court’s prohibition also applies to Bt eggplant, another GMO crop with an in-built pest resistance trait intended to significantly reduce the use of toxic insecticides, putting Greenpeace as a promoter of demonstrably unhealthy pesticide use. Compare for example to Australian cotton growers, who now use 97 pc less pesticides on their crop thanks to the same trait.

The court’s decision will prevent Golden Rice from helping save the lives of young children across Asia and Africa, amounting to an estimated 100,000 avoidable child deaths per year.

Read the full article by Mark Lynas following this link .

Rice and Prejudice

Investigative paper published in the medical research archives journal.

On 29 February 2024, the following paper concerning Golden Rice was published by the European Society of Medicine:

“Prejudice, against GMO crops and Golden Rice, in US Academia drove unethical behaviour, with global and detrimental consequences for vitamin A deficiency alleviation”

Author: Dr A C Dubock [email protected] Executive Secretary, Golden Rice Humanitarian Board, Switzerland

In 2015, Tang et al 2012 was retracted. The paper concerned human research, relevant to public health, conducted in China in 2008. Retraction represents the most severe criticism of a scientific article. This article recounts events over a four-year period and challenges the justification for retraction based on the Committee on Publication Ethics principles.

This research focuses on analysing contemporary (2012–2015) documentary evidence, organised by key narrative participants: Greenpeace, the Chinese Government, Tufts University, the American Society for Nutrition, the US National Institutes of Health, and the US Office for Human Research Protections.

The analysis indicates that technological bias within a university and a learned society, which is also a publisher, led to unethical behaviour and the subsequent retraction. In the USA, oversight of an Institutional Review Board falls under the Office for Human Research Protections. Despite being the principal funder, the NIH's reliance on this office for the retracted paper's research to be publicly available, suggests ineffective oversight.

The retracted paper detailed a crucial nutritional study relevant to combating vitamin A deficiency, a significant cause of child mortality and blindness in low- and middle-income countries. The retraction likely heightened suspicion around this vital public health intervention.

Recommendations are made which are designed to partially ameliorate the injustices perpetrated.

The full paper can be accessed by clicking the following link: Dubock article .

And the documents referenced in the text can be accessed by clicking the following link: Support material .

The Recommendations

• The retraction of Tang et al 2012 should be rescinded by ASN for the same reasons given by KMK Vice President for Publications, ASN when she threatened Dr Tang and her co-authors on December 5 2013 (Online Resource 6): “to maintain the ethical standards of AJCN and to ensure the integrity of the scientific record.”
• Tufts University should repay Dr Tang the salary not paid in 2014, should properly consider her application for promotion to Professor withheld in 2013 and back date her pay due between then and now, and compensate her for unfair dismissal associated with this case.
• The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention should reinstate the professional status of Yin Shi'an and repay lost income, and compensate for unfair treatment
• The Zhejiang Academy of Medical Sciences should reinstate the professional status of Wang Yin and repay lost income, and compensate for unfair treatment
• The Hunan Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention should reinstate the professional status of Hu Yuming and repay lost income, and compensate for unfair treatment
• To prevent further miscarriages of justice, Human Health Services of the US National Institutes of Health, should review their Office for Human Research Protections processes used to review supportable challenges to Institutional Review Board decisions.

Comments on the Recommendations by the responsible institutions

A few hours after publication on Friday March 1st the abstract and links above were e mailed individually to the President and to the Chief Executive of the American Society for Nutrition (ASN), to the Editor in Chief of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) , and to another senior editor of the AJCN (who was the Editor in Chief during 2012- 2015), The President of Tufts University, and also to the immediate Past President of Tufts University (who was President of the University 2012- 2015), to the Chief of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDCP), and to the Director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) .

On Wednesday March 5 - 4 days ago at the time of writing - comments were invited from:

• ASN (copied to both AJCN editors) relating to Recommendation 1,
• Tufts University President (copied to the Past President), relating to Recommendation 2
• The CCDCP chief relating to Recommendations 3, 4 and 5
• The Director of NIH relating to Recommendation 6.

Comments were requested by Friday March 8 midnight (CET). We said that we would record these requests and also post ‘verbatim’ any comments received on this, our website. (Comments were requested to be less than 210 words – the same as the Abstract.)

No comments have been received.

Allow Golden Rice to save lives

An Opinion paper by Felicia Wu and colleagues, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS) in December 2021, notes that 20 years after Golden Rice was first obtained by Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer, the tragedy we face is that this brilliant scientific success is opaqued by regulatory delays that have only led to a perpetuation of immense grief and huge losses in terms of preventable deaths, with no reported apparent benefits to consumers or the environment brought about by the overprecautionary stance of the authorities involved in the decision-making process. The urgency of getting Golden Rice approved has become more apparent, and even more urgent, with the ongoing pandemic, which has made access to healthcare services more difficult in vulnerable populations worldwide.

The World Bank recommends that micronutrient biofortification of staple crops, including specifically Golden Rice, should be the norm and not the exception in crop breeding. Golden Rice can effectively control vitamin A deficiency (VAD) and its deadly consequences, especially for children. Delaying the uptake of a genetically modified product shown to have clear health benefits has and will cost numerous lives, frequently of the most vulnerable individuals. VAD has cost more lives than the current pandemic already! Policymakers must find ways to overcome this resistance and accelerate the introduction and adoption of Golden Rice.

Link to opinion paper at PNAS (or as PDF )

In the 1990s, between 23–34% of children under 5 deaths in the world were VAD related. Progress against the UN Millennium Development Goals brought down this number to about 2% of all deaths attributed to VAD. This was achieved by a combination of mass vaccination programs against measles, better access to clean water, and vitamin A supplementation, along with economic development and education about diet reducing food insecurity. With community health programs having been adversely affected by the pandemic there is an imminent danger that VAD related deaths might climb again toward 1990s levels. It is under such circumstances that adoption of biofortified crops like Golden Rice can show their greatest potential as a safe, culturally simple and economically sustainable amelioration due to the simple facts that smallholders can grow and multiply their own biofortied crops and that such crops can vastly reduce the need for supplementation campaigns requiring recurring assembly of a costly labour and travel infrastructure to reach all those in need in the most remote areas. This current situation and possible solutions are discussed in another article by Dubock et al entitled “Golden Rice, VAD, Covid and Public Health: Saving Lives and Money” (Link to publisher IntechOpen or to PDF ).

Massive production of 'Golden Rice' seeds to start this year

Biotechnology to contribute to agriculture in the philippines.

The Presidential Communications office in the Philippines has announced that 2022 marks the start of massive production of Golden Rice seed, as well as Golden Rice for consumption, focusing on the vitamin A deficient provinces. Thus, Golden Rice spearheads the country's regional leadership in recognising biotechnology as a “powerful force to feed the future”, thereby establishing leadership in nutritional security, sustainability, agricultural productivity and economic growth. Golden Rice will be promoted as part of the Philippines Plan of Action for Nutrition. Golden Rice also featured prominently in the recent opening of the Crop Biotechnology Centre of the Philippines, by Department of Agriculture Secretary, Dr William Dar. The Philippines National Seed Industry Council has adopted a unified policy for the varietal registration of all genetically modified crops, saving the costs and time of unnecessary duplication of development work.

Commercial Propagation Permit for Golden Rice signed off in the Philippines

Philippines becomes first country to approve golden rice for planting.

Note: Commercial in this context means that rice carrying the Golden Rice trait for provitamin A production may be sold freely, which does not imply that there will be any extra cost attached to the trait itself, as this is prohibited by the agreement under which such varieties are licensed, according to the terms of donation by the creators of Golden Rice. Also, smallholders will be allowed to produce their seed without restrictions.

As of 21 July 2021, the Director of the Philippines Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Plant Industries (DA-BPI) signed off on the Commercial Propagation Permit for Golden Rice in the Philippines.

You can read about this widely publicised event in many local and international news releases:

International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) : "Philippines becomes first country to approve nutrient-enriched Golden Rice for planting" . Filipino farmers will become the first in the world to be able to cultivate a variety of rice enriched with nutrients to help reduce childhood malnutrition, after receiving the green light from regulators. Golden Rice was developed by the Department of Agriculture-Philippine Rice Research Institute (DA-PhilRice) in partnership with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to contain additional levels of beta-carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A. […]

PhilRice (Philippine Rice Research Institute, Department of Agriculture): “Filipinos soon to plant and eat Golden Rice” . Filipino rice consumers are close to benefiting from a Vitamin A-infused rice with the approval of its commercial propagation permit.Dr. John C. de Leon, executive director of the Department of Agriculture-Philippine Rice Research Institute (DA-PhilRice), announced that a biosafety permit for propagating the Golden Rice has been issued on July 21, 2021. […]

Zeit online (Germany): "Philippinen genehmigen gentechnisch veränderten goldenen Reis". Die Reissorte enthält Beta-Carotin – eine Vorstufe des Vitamins A. Ein Mangel daran ist in Entwicklungsländern oft Grund für Erblindungen bei Kindern. […]

Dhaka Tribune (Bangladesh): “Philippines becomes first country to approve Golden Rice for planting” . The Philippines on Friday approved commercial cultivation of vitamin A-rich Golden Rice, long touted as a partial remedy for childhood malnutrition. It comes at a time when scientists in Bangladesh expressed deep frustration over regulators’ delay in approving the variety in the country for nearly four years. […]

The Daily Star (Bangladesh): "Philippines’ approval of Vitamin-A enriched Golden Rice a positive for Bangladesh too" . The Department of Agriculture in Philippines has approved the release of Vitamin A-enriched "Golden Rice", clearing the way for it to be cultivated commercially in the country. […]

Statement by the National Academy of Science and Technology of the Philippines

On the occasion of the approval of bt eggplant and golden rice.

The Department of Agriculture of the Philippines approved Bt eggplant for food, feed and processing, and Golden Rice for commercial propagation. On this auspicious occasion, the Academy of Science of the Philippines has congratulated the Institute of Plant Breeding, UP Los Baños, for its work on Bt eggplant, and PhilRice, the Department of Agriculture, and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) for their work on Golden Rice. The also congratulated the government regulatory system for the rigorous work of ensuring that these products were properly evaluated.

Golden Rice Biosafety Assessments Published

Bangladesh and the philippines leading the pack.

Golden Rice, created 20 years ago and intended as an additional intervention to combat vitamin A deficiency, is closer to being released for cultivation and human consumption in the Philippines and Bangladesh. Assessments of environmental and consumer safety, following detailed research over many years, have been submitted in applications to the corresponding authorities (more in the Regulatory section) . Separately, the efficiency of conversion of the beta-carotene provitamin A in Golden Rice to circulating vitamin A has been reported from human studies, proving that Golden Rice is an effective source of Vitamin A (Tang et al., 2009) .

Biosafety assessments involve the molecular characterisation of the introduced gene constructs and the biochemical characterisation of the improved crop plant, including a comparative compositional analysis of the biofortified Golden Rice against conventional white rice grains. The molecular characterisation involves analysing the integrity and stability of the inserted gene construct. The DNA sequence of the gene construct is also used to exclude the unintended creation of any novel gene products, including any potential allergens or toxins. Digestibility and heat stability of the gene products (proteins) determines the dietary exposure and allergenic potential of each. In our Publications section you will find four recent publications describing regulatory data generated (Swamy et al, 2019 & 2021; Biswas et al, 2021; Oliva et al, 2020) . Food and feed safety, agronomic performance and environmental interactions are reported. The reports involved collaboration of 30 scientist authors from four countries and six research institutions: the Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU), the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in the USA, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice), and the University of Freiburg in Germany.

Golden Rice event GR2E* has been crossbred with local rice varieties preferred by growers and consumers in Bangladesh and the Philippines. This gene construct, together with its surrounding DNA, is passed on from generation to generation through breeding programs, ensuring that its structure remains intact. The resulting breeding lines have been tested in multiple locations. The Golden Rice program’s objective is, following consumption, to increase circulating vitamin A levels in the blood to counteract vitamin A deficiency, thereby boosting immunity to common diseases and significantly reducing childhood blindness, of which vitamin A deficiency is the leading cause.

An important finding from the reported research is that beta-carotene levels were around 11 micrograms per gram of grain, which is sufficient to deliver between 80 and 110 per cent of the recommended daily intake of vitamin A for children and women, depending on their average rice consumption.

As a result of the donation of the technology from its creators Professors Potrykus and Beyer, and their agreements with the Government research institutes involved, the additional nutrition in Golden Rice is free of cost to growers or consumers: Golden Rice will cost no more than white rice.

*Many transformation events were produced ( Paine et al, 2005 ) from which event GR2E was selected based on molecular structure and insertion in the rice genome, together with agronomic performance. GR2E is the basis of the regulatory data generated and is the only form of Golden Rice which is offered for approval and use.

Attitudes and Influences relevant to Golden Rice’s potential use in the Philippines

Focussed group discussions and results from four different agro-economic zones of the philippines to understand attitudes and influences relevant to the adoption and use of golden rice conducted by aim students.

In late July 2008 Adrian Dubock approached The Asian Institute of Management, (‘AIM’) Manila, Philippines in connection with some Golden Rice marketing research planned for 2009. The idea was to involve Golden Rice Humanitarian Board member and Professor of Marketing, ‘JP’ Jeannet in providing a seminar for MBA students, at AIM, in consumer field research including focus group management and analysis, followed by about a month’s engagement for the trained students in conducting the focus groups and reporting back. Prof Ricardo Lim, Associate Dean of the W. Sycip Graduate School of Business at AIM kindly undertook to facilitate the request, which could form a component of course work and experience for the MBA students involved. Raul Boncodin of IRRI, and other IRRI colleagues, were closely involved in the subsequent organisation and management.

Nutrition and health go together

“……investing in the health and nutrition of vulnerable populations could lower the mortality rate of diseases such as covid-19 — as nutritional level and mortality rates are intricately linked.”.

Prof Fan Shenggen, former Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Chair of China Agricultural University proposes that to ensure food security in the Face of Covid-19, urgent action is needed:

• Governments need to strengthen market regulation to avoid panic, and guide growers to make rational planting decisions.
• National and international feed supply chains need to function normally, while allowing person-person contact to be minimised.
• Context specific cash or in-kind transfers, are urgently needed from Government, to protect the most vulnerable population members, and these need to continue for post-epidemic reconstruction efforts to be successful. Health and Nutrition officials need to increase their influence: improved health and nutrition of vulnerable populations could lower the mortality rate of diseases such as COVID-19, as nutritional level and mortality rates are intricately linked. [Golden Rice is a nutritional source of vitamin A. Vitamin A improves human immune response to disease – Editor]
• Contagious diseases such as Covid-19, Ebola, SARS, and Avian Flu do not respect national borders. Investment is needed in resilient food systems to allow all countries to prevent or contain the impact of food security crises they cause.
• Many, or all, of the above diseases originated in wildlife and jumped to humans. Regulation of meat, seafood and wildlife markets is essential.
• The smooth international trade in food products must continue uninterrupted by trade protectionist policies of any kind. Such uninterrupted food trade provides a safety buffer against localised shortages.

Adapted from Platform for African – European Partnership in Agricultural Research for Development (PAEPARD) , based on the original China Daily source .

Filipinos are First!

The philippines is the first asian country to approve golden rice for direct use, by adrian dubock, peter beyer & ingo potrykus.

December 2019

In a victory for science-based regulatory decision-making, the Government of the Philippines has, on 10th December 2019, authorised the direct use of GR2E Golden Rice in food, feed, and for processing. The regulatory data were submitted by the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the spring of 2017 and were scrutinized by several regulatory committees representing agriculture, environment, health, science and technology, and local governments. This decision is huge, representing the first food approval for Golden Rice in a country where rice is the staple and vitamin A deficiency a significant public health problem. Those involved in the authorisation are to be praised for their scientific integrity and courage in the face of stiff activist opposition.

In taking their decision, the Philippine Government has joined Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the USA in affirming that Golden Rice is perfectly safe.

Unlike the industrialised countries, the Philippines is a country where rice is so important, that Pinoys (the Filipino people) do not consider any food to be a meal unless it is accompanied by rice. In 2018, per capita white rice consumption in the Philippines was 115 kg per annum —or 315 g daily (454 g = 1 lb), or more than 15-fold higher than in the USA.

Since the 1940s, the Philippine Government, at all levels, has pursued policies to deliver better health for its citizens. Nevertheless, the Philippines is a country where vitamin A deficiency (VAD) —which is globally the leading cause of child mortality and irreversible blindness— remains a significant public health problem.

The World Health Organization lists Philippine mothers as being moderately vitamin A deficient, and children less than 5 years old as being severely vitamin A deficient. This is despite, as reported in 2014, 85 percent of children consuming a vitamin-A rich food in the past day, and 76 percent of children receiving a vitamin A supplement in the past 6 months . Supplementation via Vitamin A capsule distribution in the Philippines has been in place since the early 1990s. Initially, the use of capsules was highly controversial. Globally, over the past 20 years, about 10 billion vitamin A capsules have been distributed to preschool children at a cost of about US$10 billion. In the Philippines, increasing standards of living, in combination with supplementation, reduced VAD incidence among preschool children from 40 percent in 2003 to 15 percent in 2008. By 2013, however, VAD incidence had increased again to 20 percent of preschool children, and 28 percent of children between 6 and 12 months old.

A universal source of vitamin A will reduce child mortality by 23–34 percent, and up to 50 percent in cases of measles, thanks to the immune-system-boosting effects of vitamin A. It is expected that adoption of Golden Rice —the golden colour beta-carotene is a source of vitamin A— into the regular diet will continue to reduce the incidence of VAD, and very sustainably: there is no extra cost for the additional nutrition, and no limitations on what small farmers can do with the seed. In the last month, a New Scientist article about Golden Rice commented: What shocks me is that some activists continue to misrepresent the truth about the rice. The cynic in me expects profit-driven multinationals to behave unethically, but I want to think that those voluntarily campaigning on issues they care about have higher standards .

Consistent with its commitment to public health, the Philippine authorities have ignored the misrepresentations and hyperbole around Golden Rice. Instead, they used their regulatory system and internationally accepted risk assessment principles (and their experience in assessing the safety of gmo crops , which are widely used in the Philippines) to carefully, and impartially, consider the data submitted by PhilRice and IRRI.

Children and women are dying and going blind as a result of vitamin A deficiency, despite existing interventions, and Golden Rice can assist. Even partial substitution of white rice consumption with Golden Rice — all grown in the Philippines by Philippine farmers — will combat VAD, and with no possibility of overdosing.

Before Golden Rice can be adopted by Filipino farmers, it will have to be approved for wide-scale propagation and receive varietal registration. Golden Rice field trials, already completed in both the Philippines and in Bangladesh —which share similar agro-ecosystems— have shown no cause for concern, so the outlook is very positive. Only following adoption of the publicly owned Golden Rice varieties, developed by PhilRice, into daily consumption, can Golden Rice start saving sight and lives , exactly as it was designed to do almost a quarter of a century ago.

Would you be deeply saddened if an airliner full of children crashed into the ground today?

How about two.

The equivalent of 13 jumbo jets full of children crashes into the ground every day and kills them all, because of vitamin A deficiency!!! Golden Rice has the potential to prevent all those deaths. Yet, Golden Rice lines developed by national scientists in countries where vitamin A is endemic are not given a green light by local authorities to be grown by those who would benefit most from those varieties, i.e., the poor families to which those dying children belong. And why is that the case? Simply because authorities are not prepared to face controversy generated by ill-guided activists and because the deaths of poor children do not seem to cause as much controversy, if any.

A recent opinion essay authored by the inventors and promoters of Golden Rice in Leapsmag reminds us of the senseless controversy that has stood in the way of Golden Rice helping reduce one of the main causes of children mortality on a global scale and brings us up to date regarding some positive developments on this front.

The essay, entitled "We pioneered a technology to save millions of poor children, but a worldwide smear campaign has blocked it" (click on the title to follow a link to the essay and the magazine).

Leapsmag is an editorially independent, award-winning online magazine that aims to foster a society-wide conversation about the impact of groundbreaking advances in the life sciences and related fields. Leapsmag publishes reported feature articles, commentary, personal essays, and interviews with innovators whose work stands to affect us all.

Golden Rice Named Among Project Management Institute’s Most Influential Projects of the Last 50 Years

Golden Rice is the first purposefully created biofortified food. Biofortified foods are increasingly being used to address global health issues. And are recommended as standard by the World Bank. Golden Rice, a source of vitamin A, is an additional intervention, and a disruptive technology, for use against vitamin A deficiency, a major public health issue and the most significant cause of child mortality and blindness globally.

7 October 2019 – The Golden Rice humanitarian project, announced today that it has been recognized in the top-10 Biotech Projects , as one of the most influential projects of the past 50 years by Project Management Institute (PMI) in its 2019 Most Influential Projects list. Golden Rice is the only plant-based biotech project listed, although it shares its health applications with the other nine in the list.

Additionally, PMI has released lists of the top 10 most influential projects across 14 categories in a variety of regions and industries, including a broadly-based biotechnology category. The final selections, made by PMI’s thought-leadership team, provide an inspirational reflection on what project work has enabled and the central role it has played in creating our present.

The lists are extremely eclectic, and it is gratifying to see Golden Rice recognised, in a process which the project had no input into.

The technology behind Golden Rice was donated to assist the resource poor of the world in 2000, by its inventors Professors Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer. Golden Rice is a not-for-profit project: no individual, nor organisation involved with its development, has any financial interest in the outcome. And, as a result of the terms of the donation by its inventors, and collaborations with Governments of countries where rice is the staple food and vitamin A deficiency endemic, Golden Rice will cost no more that the white rice variety into which the nutritional trait has been introduced.

Ingo Potrykus commented: “When starting this project in the early 90’s I was 56. Around 4,500 children a day die as a result of the ‘nutritionally acquired immune deficiency syndrome’ which is Vitamin A deficiency. Many more become blind. Now I am approaching my 86th birthday and Golden Rice is still not in the hands of those who need it so badly.

Now, though, everything is in place. The need for Golden Rice is clear, and it is registered as safe in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and USA. It is very clear it can make a huge contribution as an additional intervention for vitamin A deficiency, at no cost to growers or consumers. And it can contribute to attainment of Sustainable Development Goals 1,2,3,4,5 & 7.

Regulatory dossiers have been submitted in key developing countries. All that is now needed is for Public Health Professionals to overcome any scepticism caused by the anti-gmo activists’ activities over the past three decades and embrace Golden Rice.

Hopefully in my lifetime, you, and I, will start to see Golden Rice saving the sight and lives of some of the 3.5 billion people, half the world’s population, who consume rice, and often little else, every day.”

“This recognition reflects the incredible progress we have made in the project management profession and demonstrates how the fabric of our world has been shaped, and continues to be shaped, by the hard work of bringing ideas to life,” said Sunil Parashara, President and CEO of Project Management Institute. “This list demonstrates PMI’s vision of how excellence in project execution will be critical in meeting the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow.”

The list is part of PMI’s 50th anniversary celebration that includes various activities to recognize the important role project management has played over the past five decades and celebrate where the profession is going.

The complete list of projects honoured can be found at this PMI link

The list of Honourees of the Golden Rice project recognised for their contributions in the PMI Award

About Project Management Institute (PMI)

Project Management Institute (PMI) is the world's leading association for those who consider project, program or portfolio management their profession. Founded in 1969, PMI delivers value for more than three million professionals working in nearly every country in the world through global advocacy, collaboration, education and research. We advance careers, improve organizational success and further mature the project management profession through globally-recognized standards, certifications, communities, resources, tools, academic research, publications, professional development courses and networking opportunities. As part of the PMI family, ProjectManagement.com creates online global communities that deliver more resources, better tools, larger networks and broader perspectives. Visit us at PMI or Project Management , Facebook , and on Twitter @PMInstitute.

For more information about Golden Rice please refer to: Potrykus I (2014) From the concept of totipotency to biofortified cereals. Annual Review of Plant Biology 66(1):1-22 Dubock A (2019) Golden Rice: To Combat Vitamin A Deficiency for Public Health . DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.84445

Golden Rice: To Combat Vitamin A Deficiency for Public Health

Article by dr adrian dubock, member of the golden rice humanitarian board.

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) has been recognised as a significant public health problem continuously for more than 30 years, despite current interventions. The problem is particularly severe in populations where rice is the staple food and diversity of diet is limited, as white rice contains no micronutrients. Golden Rice is a public-sector product designed as an additional intervention for VAD. There will be no charge for the nutritional trait, which has been donated by its inventors for use in public-sector rice varieties to assist the resource poor, and no limitations on what small farmers can do with the crop—saving and replanting seed, selling seed and selling grain are all possible. Because Golden Rice had to be created by introducing two new genes—one from maize and the other from a very commonly ingested soil bacterium—it has taken a long time to get from the laboratory to the field. Now it has been formally registered as safe as food, feed, or in processed form by four industrialised countries, and applications are pending in developing countries. The data are summarised here, and criticisms addressed, for a public health professional audience: is it needed, will it work, is it safe and is it economic? Adoption of Golden Rice, the next step after in-country registration, requires strategic and tactical cooperation across professions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and government departments often not used to working together. Public health professionals need to play a prominent role.

The full article can be accessed following this link to IntechOpen (From the Edited Volume «Vitamin A"» [Working title] Edited by Prof Leila Queiroz Zepka, Dr Eduardo Jacob-Lopes and Dr Veridiana Vera De Rosso; DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.84445)

Golden Rice: The Imperiled Birth of a GMO Superfood

A book by ed regis.

Supporters claim that the twenty-year delay in Golden Rice's introduction is an unconscionable crime against humanity. Critics have countered that the rice is a "hoax," that it is "fool's gold" and "propaganda for the genetic engineering industry." Here, science writer Ed Regis argues that Golden Rice is the world's most controversial, maligned, and misunderstood GMO. Regis tells the story of how the development, growth, and distribution of Golden Rice was delayed and repeatedly derailed by a complex but outdated set of operational guidelines and regulations imposed by the governments and sabotaged by anti-GMO activists in the very nations where the rice is most needed.

Writing in a conversational style, Regis separates hyperbole from facts, overturning the myths, distortions, and urban legends about this uniquely promising superfood. Anyone interested in GMOs, social justice, or world hunger will find Golden Rice a compelling, sad, and maddening true-life science tale.

Available from Amazon

ISBN-13: 978-1421433035 ISBN-10: 1421433036

And this is what Ingo Potrykus, one of the creators of Golden Rice had to tell to the author of the book: “I am half way through your book and I can’t wait to the end to tell you, how excited I am. It is simply excellent !!! Wonderful that you have devoted your talent and efforts to tell the public in such a clear presentation, what stands in the way of an important humanitarian project just because it is a GMO project.”

Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting

Sir richard roberts talks about gm crops.

Sir Rich Roberts, FRS, organized an open letter from fellow Nobel Laureates to Greenpeace, the UN and the Governments of the World, decrying their unscientific treatment of GMO-crops. Two years later, in June 2018, Dr Roberts talked about his views at the 68th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting with Young Scientists, Germany.

Sir Rich: “At the meeting I described the Nobel Laureates campaign in favor of GMOs. Examples of the benefits of the new GM technology for citizens of the developing world include Golden Rice and halting both Banana Wilt and the Fall Army Worm.

For biofortification alone GMO technology can deliver high folate rice (mothers’ dietary deficiency causes birth defects), high zinc and high iron rice (dietary deficiency impedes mental development). Similarly, GMO Golden Rice provides a source of vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency is an immune deficiency syndrome, so children die of common infections. It is also the main cause of irreversible childhood blindness. Golden Rice has been accepted as safe for consumption by the Governments of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and USA, and registrations have been applied for in Philippines and Bangladesh. Yet, significantly due to rejection of science by activists, Golden Rice is not yet available to farmers and their communities as an additional intervention for vitamin A deficiency. And neither high folate rice, nor high iron rice, nor high zinc rice, nor Golden Rice could be developed without the use of GMO-technology.

Millions of people can benefit from the use of GMO-technology in plant breeding, it is hard to comprehend how the anti-GMO movement can sleep at night.”

See the video (50%/50% presentation/discussion) here (about 40 min):

Three of the slides which are slightly difficult to read on a small screen can be seen as large pictures when clicking on the thumbnails below:

You too can sign the letter here: http://supportprecisionagriculture.org/join-us_rjr.html

Golden Rice

An update by adrian dubock, executive secretary, golden rice humanitarian board.

In early 2001, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines became the first licensee of Professors Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer for what became known as Golden Rice.

IRRI agreed to develop Golden Rice to fulfil the inventors' vision: to make the nutritional benefits of Golden Rice available as an additional intervention for vitamin A deficiency (VAD), without any additional cost compared to white rice, in developing countries to governments, small farmers or consumers. Except for commercial export, no restrictions were imposed on what the farmers could do with the seed. Golden Rice was designed by its inventors, and the technology donated by them, to help the ‘resource poor’.

In the same year, I was fortunate to accompany Ingo and Peter to deliver to IRRI the first 600 seeds, and six 2.5mL tubes of the genes necessary to turn any white rice into a biosynthetic factory for beta-carotene. Beta-carotene, from any source, is converted by the human body into vitamin A. It is vitamin A which is essential for a functional immune system, allowing children and their mothers to fight infection and to prevent the childhood blindness often associated with VAD. Later research confirmed that the beta-carotene in Golden Rice is converted very efficiently into vitamin A. As a source of vitamin A Golden Rice can be as effective as milk, eggs or butter. Only 40 grams consumed daily is expected to prevent death and blindness, with no possibility of overdosing, as the human body only converts the beta-carotene it needs to vitamin A and excretes the rest unchanged.

Shortly after Ingo and Peter had published their initial ‘Proof of Concept’ research in 2000, they elicited the help of Syngenta. In return for Syngenta committing to assist the inventor’s humanitarian project, Syngenta acquired the commercial rights to the inventor’s core technology. In 2004 Syngenta renounced its commercial interest in favour of more profitable opportunities. But not before its scientists had made significant improvements to the technology. As they were obligated to, Syngenta passed the technology rights and the improvements, as seed, to the inventor’s licensees, including IRRI, in 2006, so that IRRI could continue to fulfil their licence obligations to the inventors.

Meanwhile, extensive data sets have been generated —the data files alone total 32 megabytes— proving that Golden Rice differs from white rice only by the presence of beta-carotene, is safe to consume, and cannot cause allergies. It is direct descendants of one of those seeds, known as GR2E, delivered to IRRI in 2006, multiplied and introduced into Asian varieties of rice by conventional breeding, which have provided that data.

Although it is hard to imagine that such golden grains of polished rice could be included in commercial shipments of white rice by accident, in the modern world any such inclusion could be damaging to international trade. To prevent even such an unlikely situation, the regulatory data has been made available not only to countries where VAD remains a very significant public health problem, but also to other countries which import rice. Independent regulators have confirmed Golden Rice’s safety.

The inventors vision, expressed in Time magazine’s headline in July 2000, is getting closer. Despite the protesters' beliefs.

For more detailed information please refer to: http://rdcu.be/wwud ; http://rdcu.be/wwui ; http://rdcu.be/wwub

And the 2016 World Food Prize goes to ... Biofortified Sweet Potatoes

Biofortification: empowering and self-sustaining.

The 2016 World Food Prize has been awarded to the group of scientists who have tirelessly worked on breeding and introducing orange-fleshed sweet potatoes to Africa and thus benefitting millions of people, especially children, who are most susceptible to a lack of provitamin A. The World Food Prize thus once again recognises efforts to increase the quality and quantity of available food to the most vulnerable populations in the world.

Three of the 2016 laureates - Drs Maria Andrade, Robert Mwanga and Jan Low are from the CGIAR International Potato Center (CIP). The fourth winner, Dr Howard Bouis, is the founder of HarvestPlus at the CGIAR International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and is being recognised for his work over 25 years to ensure biofortification was developed into an international plant breeding strategy across more than 40 countries.

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is considered to be one of the most harmful forms of malnutrition in the developing world. It can cause blindness, limit growth, and weaken the body's immune system, thereby increasing morbidity and mortality. The condition affects more than 140 million pre-school children in 118 nations, and more than seven million pregnant women. It is probably the leading cause of child blindness in developing countries.

Biofortification seeks to improve nutritional quality of food crops through agronomic practices, conventional plant breeding, or modern biotechnology, as in the case of Golden Rice. The approach of providing farmers with biofortified crops, indepedently of the technology used to achieve it, is thus the most efficient way of creating a self-sustaining and virtuous cycle of nutritional independence and life quality improvement.

In the case of sweet potatoes, breeders utilise the fact that varieties producing and storing high levels of beta-carotene (=provitamin A) are available in the Andean region of South America and thus can use these for breeding purposes and create new orange-fleshed varieties acceptable to regional taste preferences in Africa. Unfortunately, such genetic variability is not available for every crop, thus requiring the use of laternative approaches to generate the new, desirable trait.

Before the introduction of orange-fleshed varieties people in Africa had a preference for white-fleshed varieties, something which is changing thanks to the work of the WFP 2016 laureates and their colleagues at various international organizations. That goes once more to prove that preferences can evolve, especially when consumers can be convinced of the benefits to their children.

And more than that, the example of the orange-fleshed sweet potato has proven that the matrix of biofortified crops are perfectly suited as a conduit to carry the much needed micronutrient, in this case is provitamin A. The outcome of this project calls for rapid introduction and adoption of a number of biofortified crops, like Golden Rice, biofortified bananas, cassava, sorghum, and other crops rich in other micronutrients like iron and zinc, which would address other major, widely spread nutritional deficiencies.

150 Nobel laureates (updated Oct 2019) have signed letter blasting Greenpeace over GMOs

From the washington post - june 2016.

More than 100 Nobel laureates have signed a letter urging Greenpeace to end its opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The letter asks Greenpeace to cease its efforts to block introduction of a genetically engineered strain of rice that supporters say could reduce Vitamin-A deficiencies causing blindness and death in children in the developing world.

By all standards, Nobel Prize laureates are usually considered the finest intellects that humanity has to offer, notwithstanding the fact that tens of thousands of other fine scientific minds and many other serious thinkers are supportive of biotechnology in agriculture. Add to that the simple fact that we all have been eating the biotechnology-derived products for the last twenty years without a single case of adverse effects linked to the biotechnological intervention as such, and non-experts should be able to arrive at the same conclusions that these fine minds have arrived at. And that is that biotechnology has already become part of the standard toolset used in plant breeding in combination with all other technologies developed and used since the inception of agriculture as we know it.

Here's a link to the press briefing by Sir Richard Roberts FRS and two other Nobel Laureates on the topic: Nobel Laureates Press Conference - 30 June 2016

You may also want to read Adrian Dubock's (Executive Secretary, Golden Rice Humanitarian Board) comments on how Greenpeace and other GMO critics misrepresent the Golden Rice Humanitarian Project at the Genetic Literacy Project site: "Disembedding grain: Golden Rice, The Green Revolution, and heirloom seeds in the Philippines"

Are you aware of the very important Support Precision Agriculture Initiative ? If you're interested in reading about the pro GMO campaign and learn more about agricultural biotechnology follow the link provided with the initiative's name, and if you like and agree with the content please Please sign on at the following page: Join Us! and do share with your colleagues"

The Golden Rice project wins the Patents for Humanity Award 2015

Patents for Humanity is a USPTO program that recognizes patent owners and licensees working to improve global health and living standards for underserved populations. The program advances the President's global development agenda by recognizing private sector leaders who bring life-saving technologies to those in need, while showing how patents are an integral part of tackling the world's challenges.

Back in 2001, in a ground-breaking humanitarian licensing arrangement , the three applicants (with Dubock then working for Syngenta) arranged in a cashless transaction for the defined commercial rights in US patent US 7,838,749 (and related patents) to be transferred to Syngenta. The inventors retained rights to the carefully and generously defined humanitarian applications. Syngenta, in return for its commercial options acquired, became obligated to support the humanitarian and non-profit vision of the inventors, and the inventors’ public sector licensees, rights to exploit any improvement, including as exemplified by patent application US20120042417 A1. Syngenta stated in 2004 that it had no continuing interest in commercial exploitation of the technology. Nevertheless, Syngenta’s obligations to support the inventors and their Golden Rice humanitarian project remain in place.

Dr Adrian Dubock (front left) collected the award at the White House on 20 April 2015 together with Prof Rob Russell, Golden Rice Humanitarian Board member(rear left).

These arrangements demonstrate that patents have a very useful role, even for projects involving developing countries, where the protection of intellectual property rights may be less well developed. Without the inventors having applied for patents, it would not have been possible to discuss and develop the above mutually beneficial arrangements between the private and public sectors. Moreover, having the Golden Rice patent in place was crucial to obtaining access to the supporting technology package from other inventors.

GOLDEN RICE NOW!

Showing the dark side of the anti gm campaigners.

This initiative, led by Dr Patrick Moore, co-founder and 15 years leader of Greenpeace and longtime adviser to government and industries on sustainability and the environment, conducts protests and forums with the aim to end the active blocking of Golden Rice by environmental organizations who claim that it is either of no value or that it is a detriment to human health and the environment. The ALLOW GOLDEN RICE NOW! Society plans to achieve this through direct public action, media communications and coalition-building.

Visit the ALLOW GOLDEN RICE NOW! Society website to find out more about dates, locations and activities.

BBC Interview with Prof Hans-Jörg Jacobsen and Vandana Shiva, 20 April 2015. Your browser does not support the audio element.

People Pope Blesses Golden Rice

Aspb news | volume 41, number 1.

BY TYRONE SPADY ASPB Legislative and Public Affairs Director

On November 7, 2013, Pope Francis gave his personal blessing to Golden Rice (GR). Why is this significant? Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is responsible for 500,000 cases of irreversible blindness and up to 2 million deaths each year. Particularly susceptible are pregnant women and children. Across the globe, an estimated 19 million pregnant women and 190 million children suffer from the condition. The good news, however, is that dietary supplementation of vitamin A can eliminate VAD. One way that holds particular promise is the administration via GR, which had been engineered to produce large amounts of vitamin A. A 2012 study by Tang et al. published (retracted for political reasons, not because of its content) in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that 100-150 g of cooked GR provided 60% of the Chinese Recommended Intake of vitamin A. Estimates suggest that supplementing GR for 20% of the diet of children and 10% for pregnant women and mothers will be enough to combat the effects of VAD.

Unfortunately, public misconceptions about genetically modified (GM) organisms have prevented GR from being available to the countries most affected by VAD. One such country is the Philippines, where more than 80% of the population identifies as Roman Catholic and field trials of GR are nearing completion. An official blessing of the church, therefore, could do a great deal to build support, allowing the Philippines to serve as a model for many of its neighbors on the potential health impacts of widespread availability and consumption of the golden grain.

Regrettably, the church did not provide an official endorsement. It turns out that there is quite a distinction between the pope's personal blessing and an official statement of support from the Vatican. To understand the nature of that distinction, we turned to the person who elicited the blessing, GR coinventor and ASPB member Ingo Potrykus. At the time of the blessing, Ingo, a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, had been attending a meeting at the Vatican on the interaction of nutrition and brain development. At the end of the meeting, he was able to meet Pope Francis and took the opportunity to share a packet of GR. In response, the pope offered his personal blessing. (If an official blessing of the Holy See was given, it would come from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.) From Ingo's perspective, the pope is concerned that genetic modification technology primarily benefits big business and not the poor.

The most immediate hurdle to the usage of GR, according to Ingo, is the impending deregulation by the Philippine Department of Agriculture. Although no damage has been reported from the recent typhoon (Haiyan) that struck this part of the world, the fields had already been harvested. Philippine officials have been following GR development and field trials for several years, and Ingo believes that the government will ultimately give "the green light." He expects that deregulation will occur in two phases: first consumption, then planting. The consumption phase will require a two-year study of the impacts of GR consumption on VAD in Philippine children. The study will be conducted by the Helen Keller Foundation for Research and Education (http://bit. ly/1bXh9AX), which has expertise in VAD and blindness. Only after the study will farmers be allowed to plant GR, said Ingo.

GR distribution will be carried out by existing small-scale operations. Further, it will be sold at the same price as conventional cultivars. It is believed that this will help to facilitate adoption. In addition to vitamin A production, Ingo believes that other agronomic improvements, such as increased pest resistance and yield, will further increase the attractiveness of GR to farmers.

While not a full-throated endorsement of GR or GM, the pope's blessing is a step in the right direction. It is also an important indicator of slowly shifting global attitudes regarding the role that GM foods will play in the world's long-term food security.

Copyright for this article lies with ASPB News

Biofortified rice as a contribution to the alleviation of life-threatening micronutrient deficiencies in developing countries

A good start is a food start.

Dietary micronutrient deficiencies, such as the lack of vitamin A, iodine, iron or zinc, are a major source of morbidity (increased susceptibility to disease) and mortality worldwide. These deficiencies affect particularly children, impairing their immune system and normal development, causing disease and ultimately death. The best way to avoid micronutrient deficiencies is by way of a varied diet, rich in vegetables, fruits and animal products.

The second best approach, especially for those who cannot afford a balanced diet, is by way of nutrient-dense staple crops. Sweet potatoes, for example, are available as varieties that are either rich or poor in provitamin A. Those producing and accumulating provitamin A (orange-fleshed sweetpotatoes) are called biofortified ,* as opposed to the white-fleshed sweet potatoes, which do not accumulate provitamin A. In this case, what needs to be done is to introduce the biofortified varieties to people used to the white-fleshed varieties, as is happening at present in southern Africa by introducing South American varieties of orange-fleshed sweetpotatoes.

Unfortunately, there are no natural provitamin A-containing rice varieties. In rice-based societies, the absence of β-carotene in rice grains manifests itself in a marked incidence of blindness and susceptibility to disease, leading to an increased incidence of premature death of small children, the weakest link in the chain.

Rice plants produce β-carotene (provitamin A) in green tissues but not in the endosperm (the edible part of the seed). The outer coat of the dehusked grains—the so-called aleurone layer—contains a number of valuable nutrients, e.g. vitamin B and nutritious fats, but no provitamin A. These nutrients are lost with the bran fraction in the process of milling and polishing. While it would be desirable to keep those nutrients with the grain, the fatty components are affected by oxidative processes that make the grain turn rancid when exposed to air. Thus, unprocessed rice—also known as brown rice—is not apt for long-term storage.

Even though all required genes to produce provitamin A are present in the grain, some of them are turned off during development. This is where the ingenuity of the Golden Rice inventors, Profs Ingo Potrykus (formerly ETH Zurich) and Peter Beyer (University of Freiburg) comes into play. They figured out how to turn on this complex pathway again with a minor intervention.

The shocking fact is that, far from reaching the envisaged Millenium Development Goals, more than 10 million children under the age of five are still dying every year. A high proportion of those children die victims of common diseases that could be prevented through a better nutrition. This number has been equated with a ‘Nutritional Holocaust’ . It is unfortunate that the world is not embracing more readily a number of approaches wih the potential to substantially reduce the number of deaths. It has been calculated that the life of 25 percent of those children could be spared by providing them with diets that included crops biofortified with provitamin A (beta-carotene) and zinc. Golden Rice is such a biofortified crop. Those involved in the project are hopeful that in a near future Golden Rice will be growing in farmers' fields and helping to improve the diets of millions of people.

Golden Rice grains are easily recognisable by their yellow to orange colour. The stronger the colour the more β-carotene. While a yellow rice is still unfamiliar to most of us, it is hoped that the pleasant colour will help promote its adoption. Would you believe that once upon a time carrots were white or purple? Orange-coloured carrots are the product of a mutation selected by a Dutch horticulturist a few hundred years ago, because it was the colour of the Dutch Royal House of Orange-Nassau!

*Welch RM and Graham RD (2004) Breeding for micronutrients in staple food crops from a human nutrition perspective. J Exp Bot 55:353-364.

Quantum leap:

Golden rice accumulates provitamin a (β-carotene) in the grain.

Rice produces β-carotene in the leaves but not in the grain, where the biosynthetic pathway is turned off during plant development. In Golden Rice two genes have been inserted into the rice genome by genetic engineering, to restart the carotenoid biosynthetic pathway leading to the production and accumulation of β-carotene in the grains. Both genes are naturally involved in carotene biosynthesis. The difference here is that the reconstructed pathway is not subject to downregulation, as usually happens in the grain.

Since a prototype of Golden Rice was developed in the year 2000, new lines with higher β-carotene content have been generated. The intensity of the golden colour is a visual indicator of the concentration of β-carotene in the endosperm.Our goal is to make sure that people living in rice-based societies get a full complement of provitamin A from their traditional diets. This would apply to countries such as India, Vietnam, Bangladesh. the Philippines, and Indonesia. Golden Rice could still be a valuable complement to children's diets in many countries by contributing to the reduction of clinical and sub-clinical vitamin A deficiency-related diseases.

Many people are aware that vitamin A has something to do with vision, especially at night. But many are not aware of the central role it plays in maintaining the integrity of the immune system. According to the World Health Organization, dietary vitamin A deficiency (VAD) compromises the immune systems of approximately 40 percent of children under the age of five in the developing world, greatly increasing the risk of severe illnesses from common childhood infections, thus causing hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths among them.

In remote rural areas Golden Rice could constitute a major contribution towards sustainable vitamin A delivery. To achieve this goal a strong, concerted, and interdisciplinary effort is needed. This effort must include scientists, breeders, farmers, regulators, policy-makers, and extensionists. The latter will play a central role in educating farmers and consumers as to their available options. While the most desirable option woud be a varied and adequate diet, this goal is not always achievable, at least not in the short term. The reasons are manifold, ranging from tradition to geographical and economical limitations. Golden Rice is a step in the right direction in that it does not create new dependencies or displace traditional foodstuff.

Golden Rice , the real thing

Who is behind golden rice, helen keller international, golden rice will reach those who need it at no additional cost, growers will be able to reuse their seed as they please.

Those most in need of this new seed-based technology are those who can least afford buying an adequate diet, rich in essential nutrients. This has been taken into consideration by the creators of Golden Rice , Profs Peter Beyer and Ingo Portrykus, and the crop protection company Syngenta, who have worked together to make the latest, improved version of Golden Rice available for humanitarian use in developing countries, free of charge.

The Golden Rice Humanitarian Board encourages further research to determine how the technology may play a part in the ongoing global effort to fight Vitamin A Deficiency in poor countries. While Golden Rice is an exciting development, it is important to keep in mind that malnutrition is to a great extent rooted in political, economic and cultural issues that will not be solved by a technical fix. Yet Golden Rice offers people in developing countries a valuable and affordable choice in the fight against the scourge of malnutrition.

This site is maintained by the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board for the purpose of providing information on the background and progress of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Project.

Eat orange! We really mean it!

Eat orange! A motto promoted by HarvestPlus

Philippines Presidential Office: 'GMOs safe for consumption and helpful to farmers'.

Activists celebrate, philippine people suffer.

Scientific community taken aback by the Golden Rice ban by the Philippines Court of Appeals.

… as moral outrage around the world grows …”

Media around the world express their disbelief for the disdain of science, morals and suffering displayed by activists putting perceptions above many years of positive experiences with green biotechnology. Follow up on outrage statements from scientists and the media.

158 Nobel Laureates praised Philippines move

… but now the court turns back the clock (apr 2024).

Richard J Roberts, 1993 Nobel Prize Winner in Physiology or Medicine, on behalf of the 157 Nobel Prize winners and 13,292 co-signers supporting GMOs, expressed their delight with a past announcement of the move by the Philippine Department of Agriculture to authorize the direct use of Golden Rice as food and feed or for Processing. Visit Support Precision Agriculture.

Supplementation not sustainable

Pandemic affects supplementation programs.

According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) , in 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, despite the potential benefits of this key child survival intervention, only two out of five children in need received the life-saving benefits of vitamin A supplementation.

Colour Blindness

Art to remind us of the insensitivity of senseless opposition, regulatory status, golden rice vs white rice, ... and the difference is ....

A study carried out by IRRI, PRRI and the Danforth Center scientists and published in June 2019 shows that the only noticeable differences between Golden Rice and its non-transgenic counterpart are the elevated levels of beta-carotene and related carotenes. For more detail continue reading here.

Vitamin A boosts the immune system

Strong reduction of mortality in measles-affected children.

“The number of measles cases reported globally from January to March has tripled since last year, says the World Health Organisation. Africa saw a 700% surge. Since only 10% of all cases of the potentially fatal disease are reported, the trend could be even stronger than these initial indications. The main cause appears to be failure to immunise enough children.” Economist Espresso 16 April 2019

Many children in countries where VAD is endemic are not immunised. WHO states, with respect to vitamin A capsules: “For deficient children, the periodic supply of high-dose vitamin A in swift, simple, low-cost, high-benefit interventions has also produced remarkable results, reducing mortality by 23% overall and by up to 50% for acute measles sufferers.”

Doesn’t that make you wonder what a difference a biofortified food like Golden Rice could do for those children?

Another reason the world needs Golden Rice

Tb continued infectious disease.

Tuberculosis is a neglected disease, according to a newly published report in the Lancet, a medical journal. The experts’ plan is to end it within a generation. That is ambitious, even by the lofty measure of such proclamations. In 2017 tuberculosis killed 1.6m people, more than any other infectious disease. A quarter of the world’s population have latent TB infections, almost all in developing countries. Of them, 5-15% will develop the disease, mostly those whose immune systems are weakened by HIV, malnourishment or smoking . The plan calls for new drugs, vaccines and diagnostic tests, as well as doubling annual spending. Treating those who fall ill is crucial to preventing its spread. Yet currently more than a third of them go untreated. And nearly half a million new cases are resistant to several tuberculosis drugs. There seems a good chance the next generation will still be living with TB’s scourge.

From Economist Espresso 22 March 2019

Golden Rice is an effective source of vitamin A

β-carotene in golden rice is as good as β-carotene in oil at providing vitamin a to children.

August 2012. Researchers from USDA (Boston and Houston), Chinese instituions in Hunan, Beijing, and Hangzhou, and NIH (Bethesda), have determined that the β-carotene in Golden Rice is as effective as pure β-carotene in oil and better than that in spinach at providing vitamin A to children. A bowl of ∼100 to 150 g cooked Golden Rice (50 g dry weight) can provide ∼60% of the Chinese Recommended Nutrient Intake of vitamin A for 6-8-year-old children. The paper, with data based on a registered clinal trial, has been published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition . And there is good reason to conduct these studies in China, considering the low vitamin A status of a great proportion of Chinese children (see Nutrition and Health Status Report) .

Golden Rice has got what it takes

Back in 2009, researchers were able to demonstrate that Golden Rice was an effective source of vitamin A. This investigation was done with a group of healthy adult volunteers in the USA. The study showed that the β-carotene contained in Golden Rice was highly available and easily taken up into the bloodstream by the human digestive system. While foodstuffs of plant origin are the major contributors of β-carotene in the diet, these are often absent from the diet, for customary and economic reasons. And moreover, conversion of the provitamin A carotenoids contained in them is generally inefficient. Conversion factors for provitamin A carotenoids from various fruits is in the range of 13:1 for sweet potato, 15:1 for carrots, and between 10:1 and 28:1 for green leafy vegetables. With a conversion factor of 4:1 Golden Rice displays a comparatively very favourable conversion ratio. This study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2009 .

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From disagreements to dialogue: unpacking the Golden Rice debate

• Review Article
• Open access
• Published: 17 May 2018
• Volume 13 , pages 1469–1482, ( 2018 )

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• Annika J. Kettenburg 1 , 2 ,
• Jan Hanspach 1 ,
• David J. Abson 1 &
• Joern Fischer 1  

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Transgenic Golden Rice has been hailed as a practical solution to vitamin A deficiency, but has also been heavily criticized. To facilitate a balanced view on this polarized debate, we investigated existing arguments for and against Golden Rice from a sustainability science perspective. In a structured literature review of peer-reviewed publications on Golden Rice, we assessed to what extent 64 articles addressed 70 questions covering different aspects of sustainability. Using cluster analysis, we grouped the literature into two major branches, containing two clusters each. These clusters differed in the range and nature of the sustainability aspects addressed, disciplinary affiliation and overall evaluation of Golden Rice. The ‘biotechnological’ branch (clusters: ‘technical effectiveness’ and ‘advocacy’) was dominated by the natural sciences, focused on biophysical plant-consumer interactions, and evaluated Golden Rice positively. In contrast, the ‘socio-systemic’ branch (clusters: ‘economic efficiency’ and ‘equity and holism’) was primarily comprised of social sciences, addressed a wider variety of sustainability aspects including participation, equity, ethics and biodiversity, and more often pointed to the shortcomings of Golden Rice. There were little to no integration efforts between the two branches, and highly polarized positions arose in the clusters on ‘advocacy’ and ‘equity and holism’. To explore this divide, we investigated the influences of disciplinary affiliations and personal values on the respective problem framings. We conclude that to move beyond a polarized debate, it may be fruitful to ground the Golden Rice discourse in facets and methods of sustainability science, with an emphasis on participation and integration of diverging interests.

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Introduction

Sustainability is a contested and highly normative concept (Dobson 1999 ; Christen and Schmidt 2012 ). The solution-oriented field of sustainability science (Miller et al. 2014 ) has to address both the normative goals of sustainability itself and the, often implicit, assumptions that underpin different scientific traditions (Schumpeter 1954 ; Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993 ; Lélé and Norgaard 2005 ). Such normativity, especially when not explicitly addressed, often leads to conflicting, even polarized, discourses regarding what represents an appropriate intervention for a given sustainability problem. For example, polarized narratives in research addressing the intersecting goals of food security and biodiversity conservation are driven by the underpinning conceptualization of the problem as either technical or socio-political (Loos et al. 2014 ; Glamann et al. 2015 ). Similarly, the narrative explaining food insecurity as a result of insufficient production and population growth contrasts with explanations based on unequal distribution of social power as well as economic and physical resources (Sen 1981 ; Legwegoh and Fraser 2015 ). In the agricultural biosciences, calls for gene patenting, corporate funding of public institutions and public–private partnerships conflict with arguments that seeds should be regarded as public goods (Scoones 2002 ; Stone 2015 ). Such polarization presents serious challenges for sustainability science, not simply in terms of conflicting policy prescriptions, but also in the perceived legitimacy of the science itself (Bäckstrand 2003 ).

In this paper we use the example of the scientific discourse around “Golden Rice”—itself a microcosm of the broader debate surrounding the role of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agricultural sustainability—as a particularly emotive example of a polarized discourse in sustainability science. Through a systematic, quantitative (cluster) analysis of the scientific literature, we classify and describe the polarized positions within the Golden Rice debate. By viewing this discourse through an explicit sustainability lens we seek to shed light on the role of problem framing in shaping the Golden Rice discourse, and suggest ways of shifting from such polarized debates towards more constructive dialogues. In particular, we highlight the importance of understanding and acknowledging the sources of such polarization, to move beyond ‘siloed’ disagreements towards shared understandings and meaningful solutions.

The severity of conflicts around the use of GMOs in agriculture has been likened to that of a war (Lang and Heasman 2004 ; Waltz 2009 ; Stone 2015 ). Proponents see in genetically modified (GM) crops powerful tools to increase yields (Carpenter 2010 ), improve crop quality, decrease pesticide use (Christou et al. 2006 ), fight micronutrient deficiencies, adapt plants to climate change and facilitate economic growth (Phillips 2002 ). Opponents voice doubts over the long-term effectiveness of genetically modified crops in face of accelerated formation of resistances to glyphosate (Gilbert 2013 ) and to Bt toxins (Tabashnik et al. 2013 ), over the nutritional equality to non-GM crops (Bøhn et al. 2014 ), and even over their adequateness as food and feed (Séralini et al. 2014 ). Some call into question genetic engineering’s theoretical foundation on reductionist models that disregards insights from systems biology (e.g., McAfee 2003 ; Perret and Longo 2016 ). Often these GMO specific issues are entangled with political concerns regarding the role of GMOs in reinforcing corporate power (Walters 2005 ), or the promotion of monocultures and homogenization of diets and landscapes (Scrinis 2007 ).

The case of Golden Rice exemplifies many of the conflicts surrounding GMOs as a potentially sustainable solution for issues ranging from food security to biodiversity conservation. Golden Rice is a genetically modified cultivar that synthesizes beta-carotene, which in turn is metabolized into vitamin A in the human body. Some communities in the Global South show high rates of xerophthalmia, the clinical manifestation of vitamin A deficiency (Thylefors et al. 1995 ). Xerophthalmia leads to corneal ulceration and ultimately blindness. An estimated 250,000–500,000 vitamin A-deficient children became blind every year in the period 1995–2005, half of them dying within 12 months of losing their sight (WHO 2017 ). However, data are largely outdated; only 27 countries reported estimates since 2006 (Wirth et al. 2017 ). Vulnerability to xerophthalmia depends on a number of factors including eating habits such as a varied diet accompanied by fats, social determinants such as poverty or lack of education, health conditions such as parasitic infestations, and access, influenced by seasonality of vitamin A rich vegetables/fruits, land entitlements, and crisis such as famine or flight (Egana 2003 ; Oyunga et al. 2016 ). Current strategies to address vitamin A deficiency include supplementation, (bio-)fortification and dietary diversification (Ruel 2001 ; WHO 2017 ).

Golden Rice was developed by Potrykus and Beyer in Zürich and Freiburg during the 1990s in response to a call from the Rockefeller Foundation for a plant breeding solution to vitamin A deficiency. This work resulted in the first novel rice variety, which contained 1.6 µg/g carotenoids in the endosperm. The second generation of Golden Rice, created in partnership with Syngenta, contains up to 37 µg/g carotenoids, sufficient to fulfil half of daily vitamin A requirements with 60 g of uncooked rice (Paine et al. 2005 ). Footnote 1 Syngenta agreed on free licenses for famers in the Global South with incomes less than $10,000 annually. These farmers may reseed Golden Rice after every harvest. Currently, Golden Rice is still under development, with the intention that once all safety assessments are completed and it is approved by national regulators, it will be distributed accompanied by information campaigns (Potrykus 2001 ; Mayer and Potrykus 2011 ; Zeigler 2014 ).

Golden Rice promises a positive impact on human health while ensuring economic independence of smallholder farmers from large agri-business. Nevertheless divergent views regarding the benefits and sustainability of Golden Rice persist (e.g., Small 2014 ). Here, we present a systematic, quantitative assessment of the narratives in the peer-reviewed discourse on Golden Rice. Our objectives were to (1) identify and characterize narrative-based groups of articles on Golden Rice, (2) point out the scope of themes relevant to sustainability addressed by each group, and (3) propose explanations for the revealed patterns. Drawing on this, we provide ideas to facilitate a more fruitful dialogue within and beyond the scientific community regarding Golden Rice. Although our case study is specifically on Golden Rice, our approach to understanding and resolving this contentious scientific debate may also help to inform the analysis of other polarized discourses on pathways to sustainability.

Literature selection

We conducted a literature review in Scopus of English language, peer-reviewed articles and book chapters using the keyword “Golden Rice” in title–abs–key in July 2016. An article was included in the analysis if it met the following criteria. Criterion one: Golden Rice was discussed as both a biotechnological project and a health intervention, either as the focus of the paper or within a broader framing. Just mentioning Golden Rice as an illustrative example led to exclusion [e.g., in Weil (2005) “Are genetically modified plants useful and safe?”]. Criterion two: articles focusing on biophysical and technical matters only were excluded (e.g., Al-Babili et al. 2006 ). Criterion three: the article addressed three or more questions of our coding protocol. This minimum level was set to guarantee the validity of quantitative results. In contrast to the first two criteria, criterion three was applied after coding of the article.

Identification of sustainability themes

Our intention was to offer a sustainability perspective on the Golden Rice debate: which sustainability themes do the different strands of Golden Rice literature address? We defined sustainability as an ideal of human well-being within planetary boundaries across generations (Gibson 2006 ; Rockström et al. 2009 ). To operationalize this definition, we identified 16 themes, which, arguably, ought to be considered in discussions about Golden Rice from a sustainability perspective (Table  1 ). In a second step, we used an inductive approach to identify specific questions (sub-themes) under each sustainability theme that emerged from the reviewed articles. A grounded theory-based, inductive formulation and adjustment of questions during the coding process (Corbin and Strauss 1990 ) provided a higher thematic coverage of sustainability sub-themes, adding new questions and dismissing unaddressed ones. The final coding protocol resulted in 70 questions/sub-themes (Table S1 in the supplementary material). Those 70 sub-themes were coded for text analysis in MAXQDA 12 (VERBI Software 2016 ).

We summarized the coding results quantitatively in a table. A paper scored 0 if it did not address a question at all and 1 if it addressed it. The intention of this quantitative coding was to differentiate alternative discourses related to the 16 key sustainability themes (Table  1 ) and the related 70 sub-themes (supplementary materials).

Data analysis

After coding we used agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis, a method commonly employed to recognize subsets in multivariate data. Agglomerative clustering begins with discontinuous single objects (i.e., articles) and groups these into ever larger clusters. Euclidean distance was chosen as an association measure for the clusters due to our homogeneous scale, the limited number of double zeros in pairwise comparisons (i.e., no answers) and the clear interpretation of the resulting patterns. We employed Ward’s minimum variance method for grouping. It minimizes the within-cluster sum of squared errors, that is the sum of the squared distances among cluster members divided by the number of articles per cluster, thereby usually producing clear and evenly sized clusters (Borcard et al. 2011 ). Importantly, cluster analysis is an exploratory method that is able to uncover (dis-)similarities between papers and thus to empirically show different schools of thought in the assessed literature. Therefore, unlike in the use of inferential statistics the potential lack of independence of data points (e.g., papers written by the same authors are not independent) does not invalidate or bias our analysis. Results of the cluster analysis were visualized in a dendrogram. Furthermore, we conducted an indicator analysis that listed the questions of central importance for each cluster, facilitating cluster characterization and differentiation (Dufrene and Legendre 1997 ). Analyses were performed in R Version 3.3.2 (R Core Team 2016 ).

The literature search returned 98 articles (after removing duplicates, non-peer-reviewed and inaccessible publications), of those 64 passed our inclusion criteria. Of the 34 excluded articles, 56% focused on a different topic (criterion one), 29% were entirely biochemical or technical (criterion two) and 15% addressed two or less questions (criterion three). Of the 64 reviewed articles most were authored by plant scientists including biologists and chemists (44%), followed by social scientists (25%) and economists Footnote 2 (19%; Table  2 ). Forty-two percent of the articles were authored by members of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board and affiliated research institutes, or by employees of Syngenta or Monsanto. Seventy-seven percent of all articles were in favour of Golden Rice whereas 14% voiced doubts or opposed it, and 9% abstained from judgement. Evaluation of Golden Rice (Table  2 ) ranged from outright rejection (opposing), through pointing to serious concerns (doubtful), arguing that there is insufficient data to draw conclusions (cautious), ascribing great potential to Golden Rice if confounding factors can be overcome (optimistic), to arguing for the immediate use of Golden Rice to avoid preventable deaths (passionate). The first paper was published in 2001 and numbers of publications per year were relatively steady (mean 4, SD 2.2).

Cluster analysis led to two major branches containing two clusters each (Fig.  1 ). The clusters differed significantly among each other not only in the range of sustainability sub-themes addressed (Table  3 ), but also in their subjective evaluations of Golden Rice. Moreover, there was a clear disciplinary divide between the clusters. The clusters were named to reflect their thematic focus: the biotechnological branch consisted of clusters on ‘technical effectiveness’ and ‘advocacy’, whereas the socio-systemic branch included clusters on ‘economic efficiency’ and ‘equity and holism’. In the following, we describe the branches and clusters in detail (see Table S2 for illustrative quotes and Table S3 for a list of each cluster’s articles in the supplementary material). Here, it is important to note that neither the cluster names, nor the following detailed descriptions perfectly capture the approaches or emphasis of every article in a given cluster. Rather, they provide general characteristics of the different sustainability-focused narratives that have emerged within the scientific literature on Golden Rice.

Cluster analysis demonstrated two major branches of research on Golden Rice, each consisting of two clusters—a biotechnical branch (red ‘technical effectiveness’, black ‘advocacy’) versus a socio-systemic branch (blue ‘economic efficiency’ and green ‘equity and holism’). For full citations see Table S3 in the supplementary material

Biotechnological branch ( n  = 40)

Articles in the biotechnological branch ( n  = 40) were predominantly authored by plant scientists (65%) and economists (15%); only one paper was written by a social scientist. All held a positive attitude towards Golden Rice, except one with a narrow focus on the potential dangers of beta-carotene engineered plants (Schubert 2008 ). The overall approach of articles in this branch was to present Golden Rice as an engineering solution to vitamin A deficiency and to argue for broad scale usage of Golden Rice based on measurements of its efficacy in producing beta-carotene. Within the biotechnological branch there were distinct clusters of articles focusing on ‘technical effectiveness’ (red cluster; Fig.  1 ) and ‘advocacy’ (black cluster; Fig.  1 ).

Technical effectiveness ( n  = 23)

“Another exciting field of modern plant biotechnology is represented by the enhancement of crop nutritional properties through genetic modification [ref.]. There are multiple nutritional advances underway and this review focuses on two representative examples that illustrate the potential impact of this technology.” (Schwember 2008 )

As in this quote, articles primarily focused on Golden Rice as an exciting achievement in the reduction of vitamin A deficiency through genetic engineering. Topics addressed in these articles included general overviews of biofortification or GM crops (nine articles), narrow foci on biotechnical processes and resulting effectiveness (six articles), the management of the Golden Rice project itself (five articles) and economic valuation methods for assessing the benefits of GMOs (three articles). Indicator analysis did not result in any predictive sustainability sub-themes within the cluster (no significant indicator values; Table  3 ). Articles in this cluster generally stated the effectiveness of Golden Rice in regard to the target of producing beta-carotene in the rice endosperm and concluded it would increase the vitamin A status of populations at risk. Considerations of issues such as changes of diets, livelihood strategies or politics were rare.

Advocacy ( n  = 17)

“The consequence [of GMO opposition]: millions of avoidable blind and dead children. The author considers those who are responsible for this avoidable suffering of many innocent children (and mothers at childbirth) a crime to humanity […]. There is a wealth of scientific information and broad consensus that GMO-technology is at least as safe as any other technology involved in any context with our food or our environment […]. Our ‘enlightenment’ and science-based successful European culture is on the verge of being replaced by unreason-based failure and lack of culture.” (Potrykus 2013 )

As the quote reveals, the tone in this cluster was often extremely emotive, including one author who called the delay of Golden Rice’s implementation a “silent holocaust” (Chassy 2010 : 543). This cluster focused on the consequences of regulation GM crops and delayed release of Golden Rice. The unconditional safety of Golden Rice was often stated, invocations of the precautionary principle—that, in the absence of scientific consensus, there is burden of proof for proponents of new products or policies to show that such products or policies are not harmful to humans or the environment (O’Riordan 1994 )—were argued as unjustified, and the behaviour of those opposed to agricultural GMOs often framed as irrational. Articles argued for Golden Rice’s implementation with reference to preventable deaths, while not mentioning any concerns related to Golden Rice. The prevailing argumentation built upon the notion of a consensus on Golden Rice’s effectiveness and the absence of any GMO-related risks. The sub-theme ‘message: passionate’ was strongly associated with this cluster in the indicator analysis (indicator value 0.90; Table  3 ).

Ten articles within this cluster were authored by members of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board, one by an employee of Monsanto and three other authors have in the past written articles on Golden Rice with members of the board or Monsanto/ Syngenta (totalling in 14 out of 17 articles). Footnote 3

Socio-systemic branch ( n  = 24)

In comparison to the biotechnological branch, the socio-systemic branch focused less on technical achievements than on the socio-political components/contexts of food systems and vitamin A deficiency. The authors were social scientists (14 articles), economists (6 articles), biologists (2 articles) and interdisciplinary teams (2 articles). Within the branch there were two clusters: ‘economic efficiency’ (blue cluster; Fig.  1 ) and ‘equity and holism’ (green cluster; Fig.  1 ).

Economic efficiency ( n  = 10)

“We develop a methodology for comprehensive ex ante evaluation […]. We use a truly interdisciplinary approach, integrating epidemiological and nutrition details, as well as socioeconomic and policy factors. In particular, we determine the current public disease burden of VAD in a country with an important rice-eating population, and simulate to what extent this burden could be reduced through GR […]. Finally, we assess the cost-effectiveness of GR…” (Stein et al. 2008 )

The commonality of the ‘economic efficiency’ cluster was the focus on cost-benefit calculations, taking into account a wide range of variables, including political and cultural influences. Sixty percent of the articles we authored by economists. Moreover, the significance of sub-themes such as ‘acceptance’ and ‘marketing campaigns’ (Table  3 ) demonstrated a consumer oriented perspective. In comparison to the clusters in the biotechnological branch, articles in this cluster used multi-factor models in their assessment of Golden Rice and were more likely to consider alternative interventions for addressing vitamin A deficiency (e.g., Zimmermann and Qaim 2004 ; Stein et al. 2008 ). Articles tended to give a positive appraisal of Golden Rice, because it was said to be compatible with the current food system and, therefore, more realistic to implement than other interventions, especially due to its cost-effectiveness (e.g., Stein et al. 2008 ).

Equity and holism ( n  = 14)

“Addressing the most immediate and fundamental problems of food insecurity and undernutrition such as micronutrient deficiency, while essential, can only succeed in the long run by proceeding in balance with environmental, sociocultural, political, economic, behavioral and biomedical perspectives.” (Johns and Eyzaguirre 2007 )

The ‘equity and holism’ cluster took into account a variety of themes such as participation, equity, biodiversity, water and soil conservation, resilience and system thinking, values and philosophy. The number of statistically significant sub-themes in the indicator analysis exceeded that of other clusters, demonstrating the diversity of the issues and topics that defined this cluster (Table  3 ). In contrast to other clusters, only one article was in favour of Golden Rice, ascribing it the potential to “play the positive role of technological fixes […]—providing policy-makers with more options and additional means for addressing social problems” (Scott 2011 : 225). There was a particular focus on delineating and defining societal goals relating to or intersecting with the potential use of Golden Rice as an intervention for addressing vitamin A deficiency. In line with this prioritization of societal goals, most articles raised concerns over Golden Rice’s adequateness as solution to vitamin A deficiency (e.g., Lorch 2001 ; Nestle 2001 ; Small 2014 ). Articles called into question Golden Rice’s ‘real world’ nutritious efficacy in relation to contextual factors such as diet, the presence of other infectious diseases (Egana 2003 ) or storage losses (Stone and Glover 2016 ). There was also consideration of environmental and social consequences of a continued reliance on ‘mega-crops’ (Small 2014 ), the ‘placelessness’ of Golden Rice and a lack of transferability to local food systems (Stone and Glover 2016 ) as well as the disregard of indigenous knowledge (Johns and Eyzaguirre 2007 ). These concerns highlighted the need to consider complex preconditions or confounding factors in the successful use of Golden Rice as a mitigation strategy, rather than seeking to dismiss the benefits of Golden Rice itself.

Representation of sustainability themes

While the focus on sustainability themes and sub-themes varied widely between clusters (Table  3 ), there were certain sub-themes that received less attention than others. Issues that were addressed in less than 15% of the reviewed articles (largely the socio-economic branch) concerned: local interests, life quality, dignity, empowerment, autonomy, poverty alleviation, climate change, alternative farming methods, systems thinking, system dynamics across scales, details on Golden Rice’s distribution and on its monitoring, trade policies, governance and ethics. The least addressed issues such as dignity, food sovereignty, alternative farming methods and climate change (five, three, three and two mentions respectively) were largely absent across all four clusters.

The conclusions to be drawn from our results are threefold: (1) the body of literature on Golden Rice can be grouped into clusters whose range of sustainability themes correlated with the articles’ evaluation of Golden Rice and the authors’ discipline; (2) the biotechnological branch represented the dominant narrative in terms of quantity of articles, yet lacked a focus on crucial sustainability themes; and (3) there was little integration or overlap between the thematic foci or broader perspectives of the two branches, and particularly polarized positions arose in the clusters on ‘advocacy’ (e.g., Potrykus 2013 ) and ‘equity and holism’ (e.g., Small 2014 ). Such polarized debates are useful for identifying the initial differences in visions, goals and values that shaped these discourses. However, it is vital to understand the sources of such disagreements to move beyond polarization towards dialogue and mutual benefit. To inform and facilitate this process, it is useful to consider what paradigms Footnote 4 underpin the two branches of the literature, and their influences on respective problem framings and narratives surrounding Golden Rice.

Paradigms underpinning branches

The observed homogenous composition of either social or natural scientists (and their corresponding evaluations of Golden Rice) in each branch suggest the existence of a disciplinary dichotomy. This divide between scientific cultures presents a major challenge to integration (Tress et al. 2005 ), although it is not the only factor leading to polarized positions. For example, Legwegoh and Fraser ( 2015 ) argue opportunism and political economy have led to a similar case of diverging narratives in the context of the food security discourse.

The biotechnological branch’s arguments are built on premises often shared by the natural science community. A core assumption is the existence of an objective reality that can be investigated, described and to a certain extent predicted based on generalized, reductionist theories (Becher 1994 ; Moon and Blackman 2014 ). In the case of Golden Rice, this approach helps shape the observed focus on theoretical assessment of the effectiveness of plants in producing vitamin A from a purely biophysical perspective. Following positivist logic, the effectiveness in biophysical terms would translate into a successful mitigation of vitamin A deficiency in the ‘real world’. More profoundly, the idea of engineering a plant to contain beta-carotene might be traced to a framing of the problem that is characteristic to natural sciences. The nature of the problem, that is the cause of malnutrition, was perceived to be related directly to proximate biophysical factors (the lack of beta-carotene in rice plants), and not on less proximate factors such as poverty. This relatively narrowly framed problem definition naturally lends itself to a technical solution, and one aligned to the authors’ own expertise. In contrast, the existence of resource poor farmers was regarded as given and, therefore, not as target of scientific efforts (Scott 2011 ). Such bounded scientific enquiry results in generic notions of effectiveness, suggesting universal applicability directed at “the poor” (e.g., Chassy 2010 ) as a homogenous group, in “developing countries” (e.g., Zimmermann and Qaim 2004 )—an unspecified global space (Stone and Glover 2016 ).

In the socio-systemic branch the object of research shifted from the natural environment to human behaviour. Principles from the social sciences were applied, such as relativism and intersubjectivity (Moon and Blackman 2014 ), and informed a perception of the world as a multidimensional and interconnected system, whose variables cannot be understood in isolation (Loos et al. 2014 ). As result, the research centred on power and justice, systems thinking, participation and ethics within a specific place-based case, as typified by the ‘equity and holism’ cluster (Fig.  1 ; Table  3 ).

The ‘economic efficiency’ cluster only partially fits within this characterization, because most economists carry a distinct set of assumptions, rooted in rationalistic-individualistic, neoclassical, utilitarian paradigms (Becher and Trowler 2001 ; Etzioni 2010 ). These assumptions tended to favour models for assessing Golden Rice’s cost-effectiveness based on explicit assumptions informed by the study of the causal links between systems components. Quantitative methods and generalized models prevailed in this branch. This focus on generalizable models, as legitimate approaches for addressing context dependent real world problems, provides a clear link with biotechnological branch of Golden Rice research, despite the considerable differences in thematic foci between the biotechnological and socio-systemic approaches.

Distinct strengths as impetus for integration

The two branches of literature presented different strengths in their approaches to conceptualizing and solving the problem of vitamin A deficiency. The biotechnological branch offered a focused, generalizable, quickly transferable, one-time intervention, effective in regard to its target—the provision of a beta-carotene producing rice variety (e.g., Potrykus 2001 ). This rice might act as positive example of a technological fix as suggested by Scott ( 2011 ). However, the lack of focus on confounding factors that are likely to influence the success of Golden Rice, limits the nuanced understanding of how such broad brush interventions will play out in what are inevitably complex, context specific socio-political contexts.

In contrast, the socio-systemic branch’s broader, more contextualized understanding of vitamin A deficiency promoted strategies embracing the traditional approaches of supplementation and fortification along with capacity building in agroecology and education on nutrition, hygiene and health. This approach aims at synergies (e.g., by combing health checks with education measures) and at a broad notion of well-being, taking into account various aspects of health and sustainable livelihood strategies, not just vitamin A deficiency (e.g., Johns and Eyzaguirre 2007 ). Such contextual approaches face major barriers though, often not being compatible with the status quo of a targeted food system or current politics (Scoones 2002 ; Scott 2011 ). Moreover, the strong focus on the importance of context in sustainability problem framing may diminish the potential positive contribution that general, broad-brush technical solutions can have if contextual issues are addressed.

A constructive dialogue on strengths and limitations of both approaches might serve to draw a more nuanced picture of Golden Rice and to eventually inform better research outcomes by aligning both technical depth (e.g., how to design optimal seeds and growing conditions) and thematical breadth (e.g., which components of the food system influence vitamin A deficiency to what extent).

Values and vested interests in science

Despite the high promises of cooperation between the socio-systemic and the biotechnological branch, our results indicated profound differences in their respective problem framings. These problem framings required different research methods and team constellations and concluded in diverging solutions, working on different scales and time frames (short term changes in plant metabolism versus long term food system transformation). It is necessary not just to contend with the way different disciplinary traditions shape sustainability problem framing, but also with diverging values and worldviews among researchers personally (Garnett 2013 ). Moreover, there is a need to address the feedbacks between personal values and disciplinary traditions. Personal values influence individuals’ choice of discipline, and those—self-selecting—scholarly communities tend to reinforce particular worldviews. Nevertheless, the disciplinary divide seems inadequate as an explanation for the high extent of polarization between the clusters within the academic literature. Are GM crops safe, beneficial to biodiversity and a key to food security? Is it legitimate to base GMO regulations on the precautionary principle? Is our current agricultural system in crisis or at a historical peak? Polarized positions on these questions regardless of affiliations point to the influence of values and deeply held worldviews on framing the research (Fischer et al. 2014 ) and on interpreting results (Devos et al. 2014 ). These normative propositions of researchers were often obscured in the Golden Rice discourse by the assumed objectivity of scientific research. Accordingly, authors often made dichotomous policy recommendations, either supporting or rejecting Golden Rice and thus portraying the case as a formal objective problem, solvable within the realm of deduction (Levidow and Marris 2001 ; Herrick 2004 ), rather than as a normative and value-laden issue.

Moreover, in some instances vested interests have led scientists to ally with corporate representatives or activists, thereby increasing the divergence between positions through the self-amplifying process of “social bonding against a common enemy” (Stone 2017 : 590). Despite the strong influences of disciplinary affiliations, profound ideological divides, and entanglements between science and policy, our analysis showed little recognition of how these topics shape and polarize the Golden Rice discourse.

Pathways to sustainability

Offering a sustainability science perspective on how to move the debate forward, we suggest a reframing of the question and its research methodology, by prioritizing human well-being and local involvement. To transcend the reductionism of regarding rice as mere nutrient provider, neglecting its place in the eco- and cultural system (Hayes-Conroy and Sweet 2014 ), and of describing vitamin A-deficient populations as passive victims (‘the poor’) in unspecified geographic and social positions, we propose to reframe the question: from ‘how do we create a rice plant producing beta-carotene?’ or ‘how do we most efficiently raise the vitamin A status of populations at risk?’ to ‘how do we foster the well-being of people affected by malnutrition, both in short and long terms?’. Such a reframing of putting people first automatically aligns health and nutrition with equality, secure livelihoods and environmental integrity (Bennett 2017 ). Most importantly, to understand what well-being means to the people in question, there is no way around asking. This necessary physical proximity creates room for participation, for joint agenda setting, for mutual learning, for producing ‘socially-robust’ knowledge (Gibbons 1999 ), in short: for the aims and rationales of transdisciplinarity (Lang et al. 2012 ). Footnote 5

Indeed participation of non-scientists in both problem framing and solution formation was largely overlooked in the Golden Rice literature, with a notable lack of focus on sub-themes such as local culture, participation, dignity and empowerment in the articles reviewed here. This lack of participation exists despite the obstructive mistrust towards Golden Rice, witnessed both in the Global North (Baggott 2006 ) and South (Cabanilla 2007 ). Despite challenges in praxis (Brandt et al. 2013 ; Kenny et al. 2015 ) and a limited number of evaluation studies (Bath and Wakerman 2015 ), there is a growing recognition of the feasibility and potential success of transdisciplinarity, for example, in the field of health policy and systems research (Sheikh et al. 2014 ) or agricultural research (Hoffmann et al. 2007 ; Neef and Neubert 2011 ). Such approaches potentially allow for socio-technical solutions that can be adapted to specific socio-political or socio-ecological contexts and that acknowledge that multiple interventions are often required to fix what at first glance might seem like relatively simple problems (such as a vitamin A-deficient diets).

More broadly, polarized discourses regarding solutions to pressing sustainability problems may be avoided, or at least diminished, by attempts to develop shared problem definitions (both across different scientific disciplines and in conjunction with those who are impacted by the proposed solutions). This requires greater focus on exploring the way sustainability science is shaped by disciplinary traditions, underpinning assumptions, values and world-views. Furthermore, we argue that the seeming adversarial perspectives on sustainability problems that arise from more technical or socio-political perspectives may actually be complementary. The development of socio-technical solutions that seek to bridge the divide between overgeneralized technical solutions and deeply contextualized socio-political approaches with limited transferability would increase the applicability and legitimacy of sustainability science. For this to occur rather than competing narratives developed in tandem, what is required is genuine dialogue that acknowledges the underpinning factors (including problem framing) that can lead to such fractured discourses in sustainability science. Dialogue and mutual understanding denote a starting point for deeper-level institutional changes that are necessary to facilitate and mainstream inter- and transdisciplinary research projects. Currently existing institutions in science pose structural constraints to greater inclusivity. These institutional constraints include reward mechanisms that incentivise specialisation and a lack of regard for specific outputs of inter- and transdisciplinary research such as knowledge co-creation (National Research Council 2004 ; Schneidewind 2010 ). As Ostrom ( 1990 ) described, changes must happen not only at the level of operational and collective rule-making, but also at the constitutional level—in this case, the organising principles and power relationships of the institutions of science.

The findings of normative science, including in sustainability science, can be highly polarized (e.g., Fischer et al. 2014 ). Using the Golden Rice as an exemplar of such polarized debates we found that the obstacles to integration of knowledge arose from diverging problem framings, here explained as connected to disciplinary affiliation and personal values. To overcome these obstacles to shared understanding we proposed three steps: (1) to explicitly recognize why a situation is framed as a problem and what criteria constitute sustainability in the particular context; (2) to work in transdisciplinary ways, based on mutual respect, by prioritizing well-being and systems thinking; and (3) to reflect on the potentials and limitations of academia’s current institutions in facilitating inter- and transdisciplinarity. These steps may facilitate the overall aim of addressing root causes of unsustainability in, by and through science.

In comparison, raw sweet potato contains 85.1 µg/g beta-carotene (USDA 2016 ). It is the only of the 10 most produced staple crops exceeding second generation Golden Rice (FAOSTAT 2016 ).

Because economists tend to have a very specific approach to the normative issues addressed here, we classified them separately from other social scientists.

Technically seen, Monsanto is not involved in the project, having donated patents for a gene that has already been replaced, yet Stone and Glover stated the company “has been eager to take credit for Golden Rice” (2016). Further authors ascribed Golden Rice a marketing value as it facilitates consumer acceptance and eventual market penetration of Syngenta and Monsanto (Nestle 2001 ; Brooks 2011 ). Thus, we conclude the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board and biotech corporations share the interest of bringing Golden Rice to the fields.

The notion of paradigms is used to describe “a set of assumptions that structure the approach to research” (Moon and Blackman 2014 : 1173).

Following Lang et al. ( 2012 ), we define transdisciplinary as scientific principle of knowledge co-creation in teams of different disciplines and actor groups targeted at mitigating societal problems.

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Acknowledgements

JF acknowledges a Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). Synergies with the ERC-related work helped to support this paper. DJA was supported by the VolkswagenStiftung and the Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur funded project ‘Leverage Points for Sustainable Transformations: Institutions, People and Knowledge’ (Grant number A112269).

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Annika J. Kettenburg, Jan Hanspach, David J. Abson & Joern Fischer

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Kettenburg, A.J., Hanspach, J., Abson, D.J. et al. From disagreements to dialogue: unpacking the Golden Rice debate. Sustain Sci 13 , 1469–1482 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0577-y

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Why I Stopped Defending GMOs

The scientific evidence is important, but there’s more to consider..

After my first child was born, I was terrified that something bad would happen to her. I compulsively checked my stove, the locks, and my baby’s breathing in futile attempts to assuage my overwhelming fears. The parenting books, the internet forums, Dr. Oz, and the news outlets I turned to suggested that every choice could make or break my kid’s well-being. They told me that harmful chemicals lurked around every corner—in infant formula, household products, and the foods she would soon eat.

I decided to fight my fears with evidence. Over the next two years, I taught myself to read peer-reviewed scientific literature. Going straight to the primary source behind the stories, and the worries, was a desperate attempt at self-preservation. It worked to some extent. Knowledge and meds brought me out of the worst of the terror that had started with my first child in 2011 in time for the birth of my second in 2013. Eventually, I found a good behavioral therapist to help with the rest.

But I was left resentful of all of the unscientific fearmongering. I channeled the resentment into blogging, intending to arm worried parents with tools to navigate all of the scary information. Among those who exploited parents’ natural fears, the anti-GMO movement was a big one: GMOs kept popping up as the purported culprit for a gamut of problems, from obesity to infertility to the commodification of life forms in the world our children are set to inherit.

I looked at claim after claim that GMOs were harmful and found them riddled with misinformation. I learned about the financial, political, and ideological motives behind a slew of prominent players who systematically mischaracterize genetic engineering. I found, as William Saletan did in an investigation for Slate in 2015 , that the case against GMOs is full of fraud and lies.

I wanted to shout it from the rooftops. Not only were GMOs safe, they were wonderful: To me, the precise transfer of genes to confer desired traits seemed downright elegant. Papaya with an added gene is now practically vaccinated against a virus that nearly wiped it out? Potatoes and apples—like the ones I learned about on an all-expenses-paid trip to Arctic Apples orchards—that don’t brown? Well, slap an “I ♥ GMO” T-shirt on me and hand me a megaphone , I thought. That’s exactly what I did . I didn’t just wear the shirt—I became a leader in the pro-GMO movemen t .

My enthusiasm didn’t just come from my personal relief. It also felt morally correct. Among the biggest darlings of genetic modification is golden rice, engineered to be rich with beta carotene—the precursor to vitamin A—which gives the grain a yellow hue. Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children globally and increases susceptibility to infectious disease. Proponents argue that this staple food— this “gift” to the developing world — could save the lives and health of millions of poor children whose diets consisted mainly of rice. As a parent who had worried so much about her own children, it felt natural to worry about other children too—children whom the GMO movement could help if only the anti-science crowd, the crowd who’d fallen for all that fearmongering, would back down. “Like most kindhearted and empathetic people, my heart breaks for those less fortunate,” I wrote in a 2014 blog post, titled “Good, Kindhearted Parents are Pro-GMO,” which used the global potential of golden rice as a case study.

I refuted piles of misinformation on GMOs in my writing (including in Slate ). Some of my colleagues and I launched the #Moms4GMOs campaign, which soon led to Science Moms , a crowdfunded 2017 film about vaccines, alternative medicine, and food. In 2015, I co-founded the pro-GMO March Against Myths (MAMyths) to “take science to the streets” and counterprotest the annual March Against Monsanto , which promotes the spectrum of misinformation about not only GMOs but vaccines, Bill Gates, autism, and more. We carried signs with slogans like “Biotech for the People,” and “GMO Saved the Hawaiian Papaya.” We chanted: “What do we want? Safe technology! When do we want it? We already have it!”

Soon, MAMyths chapters were active across the U.S. and around the world. My co-founders and I were featured in Food Evolution , a “pro-science” documentary that shed light on the truth about GMOs and was narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, whom the New York Times billed as “the most credible public scientist on the planet” in its review.

I held contempt for GMO opponents who, as I put it in a piece for Forbes, “would rather throw tantrums” than accept the safety and potential benefits of biotechnology. We were on two clear, separate sides, each with our signs, and our chants, and our polarized views. Specifically, the other side opposed solutions to the suffering and death of millions . In the summer of 2016, when none of the countries that golden rice was made to help had taken it up, more than 100 Nobel laureates published an open letter accusing Greenpeace and other activists of “crimes against humanity” for their opposition to golden rice and other humanitarian GMOs, and urging them to stop “for the sake of the developing world.” Richard Roberts, who spearheaded the letter, told me for a Forbes story that parenthood had shaped his worldview too: “Being a father makes one truly cognizant of the value of human life.”

The 2016 general election is what began to make me question belonging to the pro-GMO community, which counts everyone from farmers to environmentalists to science fans among its ranks. We had never really talked about politics, so it had been easy to assume that I’d been holding a picket sign next to people who’d oppose the presidential candidate refusing to make basic statements about believing in science and supporting social justice. Those, after all, were my reasons for being so enthusiastic about GMOs to start with. But after the election it was clear from social media that some not only supported Trump—a blatantly racist, misogynistic candidate who flouts facts—but also taunted those of us who were upset about the victory in posts on social media. It was gut-wrenching. As I stepped back from the movement a bit, I began to see its tactics as domineering, more eager to outargue the other side than have a dialogue that weighs all of the facts. In August of 2017, one of Monsanto’s communications directors suggested that high-yield GMO corn is a technology that only “fearmongers” oppose. But it’s not anti-science to question the sheer quantity of genetically modified corn grown in the U.S., I thought. Little by little, I and others, including my MAMyths co-founders, began to question being “pro-GMO.”

The last straw for me (for many of us) came in January of 2018 when Monsanto invited alt-right hero (at the time, anyway) Jordan Peterson to speak at the annual American Farm Bureau Federation conference about farming and about “allowing ideologies to grow unopposed.” I wrote a story for Slate questioning the decision to invite Peterson, noting that the “ideologies” that he opposes are what I’d consider basic levels of respect for people who are not white men—that is, people like me. Soon after the Slate story went live, GMO advocates, including farmers and scientists—the very people I’d been siding with in the GMO movement— rushed to Monsanto’s defense . I detailed the fallout in a piece for Undark . I explained that, in my view, Monsanto’s objective seemed to be to equate an opposition to GMOs with a belief in Bigfoot, something to be debunked perhaps with the tone of an exasperated parent, not engaged with in good faith. I had a new perspective: Maybe the rustling in the trees wasn’t sasquatch, but it was worth investigating.

As the pro-GMO movement broke ranks, I started paying close attention to the calls to decolonize science and decenter the views and legacies of white, European men. Writing in the Conversation in April 2018, Rohan Deb Roy, a lecturer in South Asian history, explained that “for imperialists and their modern apologists , science and medicine were among the gracious gifts from the European empires to the colonial world.” The legacy of colonialism in science is still alive and well, he explains: “When an economically weaker part of the world collaborates almost exclusively with very strong scientific partners, it can take the form of dependence, if not subordination.” I realized that this sounded a lot like the model of “gifting” GMOs. My own grandparents lived under British colonial rule in India. It was unnerving for me to realize that proponents of golden rice—including, at one point, me—suppose that less developed countries simply need a little technological help from a society that knows more than they do. It’s, well, paternalistic.

I still craved more evidence, but this time not about the biology of GMOs. I wanted to understand the social science of the people and economies they are purportedly designed for. In the case of golden rice and other humanitarian GMOs, that evidence is pretty clear that GMO technology has not helped and has led to some objectionable consequences. “If history is any indicator, genetically-modified (GM) crops may actually render African farmers and scientists more, not less, reliant on global actors and markets,” Joeva Rock, an anthropologist at UC–Berkeley, and Rachel Schurman, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota, write of their research into the social impact of GMOs spread by Western countries. Suggesting that golden rice is a “gift,” ostensibly because it would be given free of charge to the poorest farmers, seems benevolent. But no one is putting out a pile of GMO seeds free for the taking and then just leaving the content alone. Farmers get the rice under a humanitarian license , which means there are strings attached. As Rock and Schurman explain in their latest study , Western entities that distribute GMOs abroad, like the Gates Foundation–funded African Agricultural Technology Foundation, have become embedded within governmental agencies throughout the continent. That gives these groups outsize influence in public policy. The crop isn’t truly free—it comes in exchange for reliance on and control by Western entities.

Rather than pushing GMOs like golden rice, anyone who is honestly concerned about malnutrition “would start by looking into what tools [already seem] to be effective,” Glenn Davis Stone, a professor of anthropology and environmental studies at Washington University in St. Louis, told me in an email. There have been improvements in nutrition that have nothing to do with golden rice, he explained, referring to studies showing that the prevalence of VAD has dropped from 39 percent to 29 percent globally between 1991 and 2013, and from 40 percent to 15 percent between 2003 and 2008 in the Philippines . “GM crops played no role in this,” he said. Studies suggest that these gains were achieved with vitamin supplementation, fortification of foods, nutritional education, and increasing the diversity of diets—and increasing access to those could help even more people. Too many proponents invested in GMOs like golden rice, either monetarily or emotionally, are “using the world’s poorest sickest little kids to sell it,” he says. “Talk about crimes against humanity.”

Personally, I still love a good GMO—particularly Impossible burgers, made with yeast engineered to produce a protein that mimics blood—and so do many of my justice-driven allies. But we’ve learned the hard way that people fighting for a common cause don’t always share their values. We still care about food and farming, but our focus has shifted to social and environmental justice in the food system, rather than advocating for particular technologies.

When it comes to the bigger picture, I prefer to take a more nuanced view of food systems, power dynamics, and legacies of colonialism, and look beyond the outlandish parts of opposition to science and technology to the evidence-based concerns. Sometimes solutions might involve genetic engineering, sometimes not. When it comes to golden rice, questioning its impact and the motives behind it is not “anti-science,” and it’s not up to GMO proponents to decide what’s best.

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CASE STUDY: GOLDEN RICE

Related Papers

International Journal of Social Science and Interdisciplinary Research

Dr.Basil B Mathew

The improvement of plants and livestock for food production and the use of different conservation techniques have been practice as long as the human kind stopped migrating relying on agriculture for survival. With the quest to grow more food to meet the demand of our fast growing population, genetic engineering of crops has become a new platform in addition to plant breeding. Golden rice is a variety of rice produced through genetic engineering to biosynthesis beta-carotene, a precursor of vitamin A. The research of the golden rice was conducted with the goal of producing a fortified food to be grown and consumed in areas with the shortage of dietary vitamin A. Here we explore the debate surrounding golden rice and the politics of Genetic modified organism and the concerns and challenges.

Gary L Comstock , Kristen Hessler , J. Fletcher , Ross Whetten

An interactive classroom exercise for guiding discussions of ethical concerns about agricultural biotechnology.

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MOHAMAD RAIS MUSTAQIM HARON

Golden rice was developed by the insertion of carrot gene into rice to solve vitamin A deficiency problem. Past studies have shown that consumer acceptance of genetically modified (GM) food is driven by many factors, of which moral aspects was found to be an ...

Kym Anderson

The first generation of genetically modified (GM) crop varieties sought to increase farmer profitability through cost reductions or higher yields. The next generation of GM food research is focusing also on breeding for attributes of interest to consumers, beginning with ‘golden rice’, which has been genetically engineered to contain a higher level of vitamin A and thereby boost the health

Shambu Prasad Chebrolu

Environment and Development Economics

david zilberman , J. Wesseler

Golden Rice contains the genes essential to activate the biochemical pathway for the production pro-vitamin A. Thus this biochemical pathway is activated especially in the endosperm. The intensity of the “golden colour” represents the concentration of pro-vitamin A. In developing countries, 500,000 people become blind each year and up to 6,000 die per day from vitamin A-malnutrition. This is despite enormous efforts from public and philanthropic institutions to reduce this medical problem with the help of traditional interventions such as supplementation, fortification, encouragement for diet diversification, etc. This heavy toll that poor people in developing countries are deprived of the basic nutrition needed to sustain life. Biotechnology is one of the several means to achieve and sustain food security, equitable access to health services, a safe environment, and industry development. In agriculture, biotechnology can be applied in many different ways, and one of the most well-known and talked-about is through the development of genetically modified (GM) crops. Farmers and consumers benefit from rice genetic research because it leads to new rice varieties that have higher yield, higher quality, and are more resistant to pests, diseases, and the effects of climate change. The potential benefits of GM rice are also important, particularly around improving nutrition. Once Golden Rice varieties have passed the national bio-safety procedures, it will be made available to subsistence farmers free of cost It will become the property of the farmers so that they can grow it year after year and use part of their harvest for the next sowing without additional costs. The farmers will use their traditional farming systems which do not require any additional agronomic inputs.

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Golden Rice

An Intimate Debate Case

By Annie Prud’homme-Genereux

Share Start a Discussion

In this intimate debate case, students consider whether to support the development and use of Golden Rice as a means to alleviate vitamin A deficiency in the developing world. Since many of the arguments typically raised against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) do not apply to this particular GM crop, students are forced to analyze the facts rather than rely on what they have heard in the media. Teams of students are presented with evidence that supports either the pro or con position. Based on this information, they formulate arguments to defend their position, then present their case to another team. Each team also listens to arguments from a team defending the other position. Listening skills are developed in addition to scientific argumentation skills, since in the next phase of the debate students must defend the opposite position. This is followed by a whole-class discussion that explores broader issues and questions introduced by the case.  Developed for an introductory molecular biology undergraduate course, the case could also be used at more advanced levels.

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Date Posted

• Describe concepts associated with GMOs such as monoculture, cross-fertilization of crops, allergenicity, and patents.
• Examine the arguments supporting and opposing the use of a GMO.
• Evaluate the merits of using Golden Rice to alleviate vitamin A deficiency in developing regions.
• Consider the socio-political causes and implications of malnutrition in developing countries and propose the best strategies to remedy it in the long-term.

Golden rice; genetic engineering; genetically modified organism; GMO; vitamin A deficiency; gene patent and licensing; Potrykus; developing world; bioethics

Subject Headings

EDUCATIONAL LEVEL

High school, Undergraduate lower division, Undergraduate upper division

TOPICAL AREAS

Scientific argumentation, Social justice issues, Social issues

TYPE/METHODS

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