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BD to pioneer Golden Rice commercial production


Published : 28 Nov 2019 09:41 PM | Updated : 07 Sep 2020 04:46 PM

The government is pondering over giving approval for commercial cultivation of vitamin A fortified rice, known as Golden Rice, in the country which will be the first of its kind in the world. Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) is waiting for the government’s food safety clearance certificate for Golden Rice as a new variety of vitamin-A fortified rice.

“The vitamin A enriched rice variety, popularly known as Golden Rice, would finally require the environment ministry’s permission … and then maximum two years will be needed for it to be released as the new GM rice variety for the growers,” Dr Partho Sarothi Biswas, Principal Scientific Officer (PSO) of BRRI said.

After final approval within this year, the national seed certification agency under the Ministry of Agriculture will take steps to release the variety after two-season trial production at the field level by some assigned growers at some particular locations, said the BRRI scientist.

Golden Rice, is a beta carotene-rich rice, produced through genetic engineering to biosynthesize, a precursor of vitamin A, can face the deficiency which each year is estimated to kill 670,000 children under the age of five and cause an additional 500,000 cases of irreversible childhood blindness.

It is to be noted, USA, Canada and Australia governments have already given approval for cultivation of this variety of golden rice in their respective countries. Besides, Philippines and Indonesia are also developing the Golden Rice. According to the World Health Organization's global Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) database, one in every five pre-school children in Bangladesh is vitamin A-deficient. Among the pregnant women, 23.7 percent suffer from VAD.

After two years field level cultivation and trial the BRRI scientists went for a final cycle of multi-location field trials and sought regulatory approval from the government for an ‘unconfined’ field test prior seeking variety release approval. According to BRRI, in last Boro season they have got 10 to 12 μg/g (micrograms/gram) beta carotene in a BRRI dhan29 line genetically converted into Golden Rice, which should be enough to address half of rice-eating consumers’ daily deficiency of vitamin-A.
With this development, a long wait is nearly over for rice breeders who have been trying since 1999 for a varietal development and release of Golden Rice, long being touted by the scientist fraternity as a key remedy to acute VAD problem.

After the environment ministry signs off, Golden Rice must be registered by a seed certification agency within the Ministry of Agriculture, which requires field trials in multiple places to test for seed quality. If all goes smoothly, farmers might have Golden Rice seed to plant by 2021, an academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) said, one of the world’s topmost weekly circulated journals with an estimated readership is 5,70,400.

Now, Bangladesh appears about to become the first country to approve Golden Rice for planting. “It is really important to say we got this over the line,” says Johnathan Napier, a plant biotechnologist at Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, U.K., who was not involved in the crop’s development.

It is to be noted, 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. Low levels of vitamin A also contribute to deaths from infectious diseases such as measles. Spinach, sweet potato, and other vegetables supply ample amounts of the vitamin, but in some countries, particularly those where rice is a major part of the diet, vitamin A deficiency is still widespread; in Bangladesh it affects about 21% of children.

Over the past 2 years, regulators in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia approved Golden Rice for consumption. There are no plans to grow the crop in these countries, but approval will prevent problems if Golden Rice somehow accidentally turns up in food supplies, the journal said.