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Vitamin-enhanced rice is the focus of an important modified-food project. Each year about 500,000 children go blind from vitamin A deficiency, said Jorge E. Mayer, golden rice project manager at Campus Technologies Freiburg at the University of Freiburg, in Germany. Transgenic "golden rice"--so-called because of its yellow color--that has been engineered to contain a precursor to vitamin A could prevent many cases of blindness, he said. The newest strain of golden rice has 23 times the ß-carotene content of the original version, an amount sufficient to cover vitamin A requirements of deficient children in rice-based societies. Because it is not yet certain that the form of ß-carotene in golden rice is bioavailable to humans, trials of bioavailability will begin in August. A public-private partnership has been created between Syngenta, the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Freiburg, and other entities to develop and market the rice. Under the agreement, farmers can replant golden rice and trade it locally, Mayer said. Transgenic-organism-based " 'biofortification' could reduce malnutrition in a cost-effective and sustainable manner if we adopted a rational deregulation process based on benefit/risk analysis," he said. Field trials of golden rice have been conducted in Louisiana because regulatory red tape has delayed trials in India, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Bangladesh, Mayer said. With a streamlined regulatory framework in target countries, breeding golden rice varieties for these countries could proceed and eliminate unnecessary deaths and blindness from vitamin A deficiency, he explained. |
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