Biotech Updates

Field Trial and Feeding Study of GABA-fortified Rice

June 3, 2015

Hypertension is known as one of the critical factors associated with heart ailments. Thus, scientists have developed rice fortified with γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA), a blood-pressure lowering agent. They used Japonica rice cultivar ‘Koshihikari' by genetic manipulation of GABA shunt-related genes. To further investigate the efficacy of GABA-fortified rice, field trial and feeding test were conducted.

The results of the greenhouse field trials showed that the yield of transgenic rice plants are similar to non-transgenic Koshihikari plants, but the transgenic plants contained significantly higher levels of GABA. Furthermore, two months of daily oral administration of diet with GABA-fortified rice resulted to approximately 20 mmHg anti-hypertensive effect in spontaneous hypertensive rats.

The findings imply that GABA-fortified rice may be used as staple food to prevent hypertension.

Read the full paper published by Transgenic Research.