Golden Rice, part 1: The story of a GMO crop that could benefit two billion children a year

Adrian Dubock | May 15, 2019

Research was initiated in the early 1990s which led in 2000 to the publication of the technology behind what came to be known as Golden Rice. From the outset, the intention was to create a source of vitamin A in the endosperm of rice, as an additional intervention for vitamin A deficiency. Philanthropy and the public sector funded the research. In 2001, the inventors, Professor Ingo Potrykus and Dr. (now Professor) Peter Beyer, assigned their patents to Syngenta for commercial exploitation as part of a transaction which obliged the company to assist the inventors’ humanitarian and altruistic objectives.

At the same time, the nutritional technology was donated by its inventors for use in developing countries. The inventors licensed a network of Asian government-owned rice research institutes to deliver their objectives. Product development was initiated through the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the network. The whole network, including IRRI, worked to a common set of goals defined in licences each institution signed with the inventors. The terms included that there would be no charge for the nutritional technology and it would only be introduced to publicly owned rice varieties........To Read More....