By ASHOK B SHARMA
The Financial Express
NEW DELHI, NOV 22: The delay in the release of provitamin A rich Golden Rice for mass cultivation in India has led to an avoidable loss of 240,000 lives, says the co-inventor of the product Ingo Potrykus.
The transgenic Golden Rice contains two novel genes - one from maize and other from a soil bacterium. It does not contain an antibiotic resistance marker gene.
The only novelty being the protein from the bacterial gene - phytoene-desaturase, said Potrykus and claimed that no environmental risk or health problem was involved.
According to him, Golden Rice would minimise vitamin A malnutrition on basis of traditional normal diet.
Potrykus is perturbed over the ‘extreme precautionary regulation’ for genetically modified (GM) crops in India. “It led, so far, to a delay of at least six years in the use of Golden Rice with a consequence of an avoidable loss of 240,000 lives,” he said.
He was also very critical of the ‘anti-GMO lobby’ for stalling the process of approval of GM crops and alleged that the delay in Indian regulatory process was due to ‘European influence’.
Golden Rice in India is still at the stage of development in the labs and the developers are yet to apply for permission for contained field trials and hence Potrykus charges against Indian regulatory authority seems to be misplaced.
Potrykus who is also the chairman of the Humanitarian Golden Rice Board and Network that the technology to Indian public sector scientists for public good. Indian scientists can isolate their own genes and use their own constructs and develop their own provitamin A rice lines.
Scientists at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and BRRI are transferring the new trait into 8 carefully selected Indian rice varieties.
Golden Rice, after its approval in the country “would be made available free of charge with limitations within the framework of humanitarian use.” The farmers will be able to save seeds for the next season.
The seed multinational, Syngenta, however, maintains the rights for commercial exploitation and those interested in commercialisation of the product would have to get a licence from that company, said Potrykus.
Potrykus, however, hopes that Golden Rice would be released for farmers’ field by 2012 and would rescue 40,000 lives per year and prevent 125,000 cases of blindness. He estimated annual loss of lives in India due to vitamin A deficiency at 71,600.
