21 January 2000

Researcher Cites New Rice as Way to Help Developing World

By Jim Fuller
Washington File Science Correspondent

The Hague - A highly recognized research scientist says the recent development of a genetically altered rice to combat vitamin A deficiency is a striking example of how many scientists - particularly in the public sector - are strongly motivated to help people in the developing world.

Chris Somerville, who heads a research group in plant biology at the Carnegie Institute of Washington, spoke about the new "golden rice" January 20 at a conference that brought together leading international figues in biotechnology research and policy. The two-day conference was organized by the U.S. Embassy together with the Dutch Ministries of Health, Agriculture and Economic Affairs.

Somerville said in an interview following his remarks that the engineered rice contains transplanted genes that allow plants to produce rice kernels carrying beta-carotene, the world's most common source of vitamin A.

He said that preventing vitamin A deficiency, the world's leading cause of blindness, is expected to prevent over a million deaths each year among children and avert other health problems in about 400 million people who are vitamin A deficient. Commodoties with such potential benefits usually come with a price, but the new rice will eventually be available to the world free of charge.

"I think this eliminates the suspicion that this new technology is being dominated by big multinational companies," Somerville said. "There's also the suspicion that all this talk about helping the developing world is not true. In fact, this latest development is a striking example that many scientists are strongly motivated to pursue goals that will help people in the developing world, and don't care about the profit motive at all."

The new rice was developed following a research investment of more than $100 million over 10 years, with funding being provided mainly by organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation, the European Community Biotech Program and Zurich's Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which conducted the research.

Rights to the rice have been made freely available to the Philippine-based International Rice Research Institute. While the rice's beta-carotene genes have survived across several generations of engineered laboratory plants, the reseach institute must now put the trait into commercially useful rice strains - a process that is expected to take two to three years. Once researchers produce crops of viable seed rice, the institute will offer the new rice free to any nation that
wants it.

Somerville said this was possible because of the huge investment made in basic genetic research in the developed world. Somerville's own research team at the Carnegie Institute pioneered the use of the small mustard Arabidopsis thaliana as a model species for plant molecular genetics.

"In the developed world we have the luxury of being able to pursue basic research and understanding fundamental mechanisms without regard to the applications - but just because we have a need to know," he said. "And I think what's happening with vitamen A rice is a good example of an international foundation, such as Rockefeller, taking responsibility to get that knowledge out to the people who need it in the developing world."

Somerville said that the so-called "Green Revolution" - the movement to breed new, high-yield strains of basic grains in the developing world - required costly inputs by farmers. In contrast, he said, the latest innovations - which he called the second Green Revolution - will require no additional input and come free to farmers.

"Not only is the seed free, but it doesn't cost anything more to grow high vitamin A rice," he said. Somerville said the same will be true for a genetically modified rice strain with increased iron content, which is currently under development. Iron deficiency anemia is the world's worst nutrition disorder, affecting nearly 2,000 million people.

As for the future, Somerville said innovations in the field of plant research are going to require a one-by-one analysis. "The challenge is to come up with processes that don't impose huge and unreasonable costs on useful innovations that are harmless, but, at the same time, do put in place appropriate review processes for things that are more complex."

As an example of the latter, Somerville said that several years ago he had engineered plants to accumulate biodegradable thermo-plastics as a source of renewable plastics. "That work is still being developed in industry now, but if and when it arrives in the marketplace...that's the kind of product that will require a lot of review at many levels to determine the consequences," he said.

Somerville said he didn't know of anything currently being done in plant research that would be dangerous to health or the environment. He added, however, that there are things happening that could be socially undesirable.

"For example, putting a very useful herbicide resistance into a plant species that crosses over to weeds," he said. "That's not dangerous, but it wouldn't be socially desirable because suddenly you would have herbicide-resistant weeds, and you would lose the use of a safe, proven herbicide."

Somerville said the greatest danger to the environment is population growth and the expansion of agriculture. "Agriculture is the most destructive thing to the environment," he said. "And biotechnology has the potential to reduce the impact of agriculture on the environment."

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