BACKGROUND

 

Golden Rice, left, contains beta carotene, the same vitamin A precursor that makes carrots orange. (Credit - IRRI)

    In 1992, Potrykus and colleagues devised a strategy for producing the Golden Rice, and they announced in 2000 that they had developed an experimental prototype. Potrykus appeared on the cover of Time magazine with his rice, which the cover proclaimed “could save a million kids a year”. In 2002, Golder Rice research moved to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines to be developed for Filipino farmers. Meanwhile, the global agricultural company Syngenta developed a new package of genes to improve the beta carotene levels in the Golden Rice. By 2005 they released Golden Rice 2. But there was a problem. Field trials showed that the introduced genes had indeed disrupted other genes and lowered the rice’s productivity, so breeders turned to a different event. Finally in 2017, field trials showed that this rice grew adequately. After that, the rice was submitted to the Philippine Bureau of Plant Industry, which is designated as SAFE in December 2019.