Golden rice
This changes the colour of the wild rice to a golden colour. Beta carotene is needed by humans in order to make vitamin A – which is essential for good vision. The advantage of golden rice is that it can be used in areas where vitamin A deficiency is common , so it can help prevent blindness.
Why is golden rice bad?
Golden Rice Risks
Risks include potential allergies or antibiotic resistance . There is also the possibility that genetically modified foods may enter the food supply inadvertently when GMO crops are planted near non-GMO crops, without the consumers’ knowledge.
How is golden rice different from normal rice?
The key difference between golden rice and normal rice is that golden rice is a genetically modified rice which contains a high amount of beta-carotene and other provitamin A carotenoids while normal rice contains no beta-carotene, and no vitamin A.
What does golden rice have that normal rice does not?
The “gold” was in fact beta carotene , a substance that is converted into vitamin A in the human body. Conventional rice plants already contained beta carotene, but only in their leaves and stems, not in the kernels. Golden Rice also carries the substance in the part of the plant that people eat.
What makes golden rice Golden?
The endosperm of Golden Rice (Oryza sativa) is yellow due to the accumulation of beta-carotene (provitamin A) and xanthophylls . The product of the two carotenoid biosynthesis transgenes used in Golden Rice, phytoene synthase (PSY) and the bacterial carotene desaturase (CRTI), is lycopene, which has a red color.
What are the disadvantages of farmers growing golden rice?
Unpredictable toxic by-products can also be created and over-expression can also increase the potential toxicity of Vitamin A in the form of transgenically expressed retinoic acid and can also exacerbate unintended metabolic effects as well as instability.
Who is the father of golden rice?
The magazine showed the father of Golden Rice, Swiss plant researcher Ingo Potrykus , touting it as “rice that could save a million lives a year”.
Is Golden Rice safe to consume?
The plant is engineered to be packed with beta-carotene, an orange pigment that the body converts into the essential nutrient vitamin A. Declared “ as safe as conventional rice ” by the Department of Agriculture in December, golden rice can now be legally consumed and processed.
What is disadvantage of GMO?
There is a small chance that the genes in food can transfer to cells the body or bacteria in the gut. Some GMO plants contain genes that make them resistant to certain antibiotics . This resistance could pass on to humans. There is growing concern globally that people are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics.
Why should Golden Rice be discouraged?
Both the development of biofortified crops like Golden Rice for solving health issues and corporate led projects in agriculture as ways to ensure food security represent a worrisome push for top-down and anti-diversity approaches to food and health that will ultimately undermine people’s capacities to strengthen their ...
What issue does Golden Rice solve?
Golden Rice is a form of normal white rice that has been genetically modified to provide vitamin A to counter blindness and other diseases in children in the developing world. It was developed two decades ago but is still struggling to gain approval in most nations.
Which countries use Golden Rice?
Golden Rice has been accepted as safe for consumption by the Governments of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and USA, and registrations have been applied for in Philippines and Bangladesh .
What made the Golden Rice project succeed?
Golden Rice has an engineered multi-gene biochemical pathway in its genome. This pathway produces beta-carotene , a molecule that becomes vitamin A when metabolized by humans. ... The scientists and their collaborators first succeeded in expressing beta-carotene in rice in 1999, and they published the results in 2000.
What is the future of Golden Rice?
If Golden Rice appears on the market in the Philippines by 2022 , it will have taken over 30 years of development to create a product that may not affect vitamin levels in its target population, and that farmers may need to be paid to plant.”
Who produce golden rice for the first time?
Golden Rice was developed in the late 1990s by German plant scientists Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer to combat vitamin A deficiency, the leading cause of childhood blindness.
Is Golden Rice allowed in India?
However, they have been controversial in India, with some civil society groups raising health- and environment-related concerns. The only GM crop under commercial cultivation in India is Bt cotton. ... Golden rice is meant to tackle Vitamin A deficiency , a major public health problem, especially in South Asia.
