Biotech Updates

Comparison of Nutritional Compositions of High Iron Rice and Indica Rice

January 23, 2013

Polished rice contains low amounts of iron, an essential micronutrient in human nutrition. Thus, Dipak Gayen of the University of Calcutta and colleagues developed a biotech rice variety with high iron content by inserting ferritin gene from soybean into the genome of indica rice (IR68144). After transformation, they compared the nutritional content of the brown and milled rice grain with the non-transgenic counterpart.

Results showed that the transgenic rice seeds had increased levels of iron and zinc, and the other nutritional values are substantially equivalent with that of the non-transgenic rice seeds. Thus, the transgenic rice is safe for human consumption and could be a good source of iron.

Read more about the results of the study at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814612017979.