Beta Carotene Rich Rice Helps Blindness

January 18, 2000

Researchers at a Swiss laboratory have developed a rice variety rich in beta carotene, a source of vitamin A. Some 124 million children worldwide are deficient in vitamin A, including 250,000 in Southeast Asia who go blind each year because of the deficiency.

The rice may not be available for several years, but the International Rice Research Institute is working on breeding the trait into popular varieties.

Rice is a poor source of many essential nutrients, including vitamin A, but is the staple for half the world's population. Rice naturally produces its own beta carotene that is lost in the milling process. The biotech variety developed at the Swiss laboratory would have the beta carotene in the endosperm, the part people eat.

The Rockefeller Foundation, the lead sponsor of the rice research, views biotechnology as a solution to world hunger and wants to develop crops that would resist drought, pests and soil toxins. It might be possible to put iron and other nutrients in plants once the genetic pathways are known.

"One can only hope that this application of plant genetic engineering to ameliorate human misery without regard to short-term profit will restore this technology to political acceptability," says Mary Lou Guerinot of Dartmouth College.