Monsanto Offers Break on Technologies

August 4, 2000

Monsanto is providing royalty-free licenses for all its technologies that can help develop "golden rice" and other pro-vitamin A enhanced rice varieties. The special rice could help people suffering from vitamin A deficiencies. The announcement was made in India at an agricultural biotechnology symposium.

The company also announced the recent launch of a new Internet web site, www.rice-research.org, opening its rice genome sequence database to researchers around the world. Monsanto's royalty-free license offer for all the company's technology that may be useful in the development of rice varieties with increased levels of pro-vitamin A (or beta carotene) is expected to aid researchers working in this area who wish to make use of existing proprietary technologies.

"We want to minimize the time and expenditure that might be associated with obtaining licenses needed to bring 'golden rice' to farmers and the people in dire need of this vitamin in developing countries," said Hendrik Verfaillie, CEO of Monsanto Company, a subsidiary of Pharmacia Corporation.

Golden rice was developed by Professor Ingo Potrykus, professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, and Dr. Peter Beyer, University of Freiburg, Germany, with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation. In May the inventors announced a collaboration with Greenovation and Zeneca to enable delivery of this technology free-of-charge for humanitarian purposes. Zeneca pledged to provide regulatory, advisory and research expertise to assist in making "golden rice" available in developing countries.

The modified rice is expected to provide nutritional benefits to those suffering from vitamin A deficiency-related diseases, including irreversible blindness in hundreds of thousands of children annually. Adequate vitamin A intake also can reduce the mortality associated with infectious diseases such as diarrhea and childhood measles by enhancing the activity of the human immune system.

Monsanto has already completed the transfer of its rice genome draft sequence data and other materials to the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) as the lead agency of the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project (IRGSP). The IRGSP is a ten-member consortium of rice genome sequencing projects around the world.