Golden Rice to Lead the Way in Producing Healthier Rice Varieties

Precision agriculture, including GM crops, provides the tools to assist for macronutrients yield, climate change adaption, and other unfavorable growing conditions, as well as malnutrition. Adrian Dubock of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board presented Golden Rice as an example of a product of precision agriculture that has a huge potential to improve micronutrient intake, especially in areas with high prevalence of vitamin A deficiency (VAD). The review article is published in Agriculture and Food Security journal.

According to the article, the first challenge for the Golden Rice project is to enable managed adoption in rice-consuming population with high incidences of VAD. "For the Golden Rice in the mega-rice varieties (IR64, IR36, BR29 and PSB Rc82) carrying the GR2E transformation event, it is time for scientists and rice breeders to 'pass the baton' to rice seed multipliers, to extension workers, to public health educators, to those responsible for children and women, for school meals services, and to health and welfare professionals. Hopefully, philanthropy will not be so bored and exhausted by the past 17 years, that they may assist in catalyzing this Golden Rice adoption work," says Dubock in his article. He also predicts that in the long run, other micronutrient traits will be combined with beta-carotene to produce multi-vitamin and multi-mineral rice.

Read more from Agriculture and Food Security.