1.Grants aim to fight malnutrition
2.New Golden Rice partners join forces against vitamin A deficiency

RESOURCES:

Golden Rice "could save a million kids a year"
http://bit.ly/bcjSIl

The International Rice Research Institute
http://bit.ly/i526bW

The Coordinator of the Golden Rice Network, former Monsanto man Gerard Barry - a profile
http://bit.ly/dSIQ8r  

Head of agricultural development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lawrence Kent,  previously worked out of the Monsanto-funded Donald Danforth Plant Science Center - see: GM cassava our only hope
http://bit.ly/h0EbdF

The inventor of Golden Rice, Ingo Potrykus - a profile
http://tiny.cc/nz823
---
---
1.Grants aim to fight malnutrition
Anjali Nayar
Nature News, 14 April 2011
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110414/full/news.2011.233.html

*Cash boost should help bring fortified rice and cassava to market.

[image caption: Golden rice (right) provides more vitamin A than normal rice.International Rice Research Institute]

Nearly US$20 million in new grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be spent on getting nutritionally enhanced rice and cassava to market and decreasing malnourishment in Asia and Africa.

The grants will help in the development, testing and marketing of Golden Rice, which is fortified with vitamin A, in the Philippines and Bangladesh, and BioCassava Plus, a tuber fortified with vitamin A, iron and protein in Kenya and Nigeria.

In rich countries, people generally have access to a diverse diet and to foods that have been fortified with various essential nutrients, but these items are often unaffordable or unobtainable in the developing world.

People in poor nations, especially farmers, often only have access to what they grow. In parts of Asia, people rely on rice for 50 80% of their daily calories, and around 70 million Africans rely on cassava. It's no surprise then, that vitamin and mineral deficiencies affect more than two billion people worldwide, and contribute to around 7% of deaths and 10% of the disease burden in low-income countries, according to Juan Pablo Pena-Rosas, coordinator of the Micronutrients Unit at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.

Biofortified, or nutritionally enhanced, staple crops could thus greatly reduce the death and disease burden related to nutritional deficiencies, according to Lawrence Kent, head of agricultural development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington. Several research groups are working on fortified varieties of bean, rice, maize, sweet potato, cowpea, peanut, wheat, pumpkin and banana.

"I'm optimistic that biofortification can help to improve people's health and lives because we are using sustainable foods that people already grow," Kent says.

Lab or field?

Plants can be fortified either through conventional plant breeding or using biotechnology to alter its genome and increase its nutritional yield, explains Pena-Rosas.

The firm HarvestPlus in Washington DC, which released orange sweet potato containing 50% of the daily vitamin A requirement in Uganda and Mozambique in 2007, uses traditional breeding techniques. Both Golden Rice and BioCassava Plus are genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and have attracted their fair share of negative attention from the anti-GMO lobby. "Anything that involves biotechnology involves a level of controversy," explains Kent. "But we need to be open and data-focused."

The Gates Foundation grants will help to generate the data needed for Golden Rice and BioCassava Plus to meet food safety and environmental regulations. "These crops will not be used by farmers or consumers until they pass tests for biosafety in each country," says Gerard Barry, who coordinates the Golden Rice Network at the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños in the Philippines.

Golden Rice is expected to receive regulatory approval in the Philippines in 2013 and in Bangladesh in 2015, according to Ingo Potrykus, a retired geneticist at the Institute of Plant Sciences in Zurich, Switzerland, and one of the rice's inventors. BioCassava Plus should follow a few years later ”” the team hopes to obtain approvals by 2017, according to Martin Fregene, a plant geneticist and the director of the BioCassava Plus Program, based in St Louis, Missouri.

"As long as we can show that [these products] add value and are safe, there is no mother who would not want to use them to increase the health of her kids," says Fregene.
---
---
2.New Golden Rice partners join forces against vitamin A deficiency
IRRI Media release: 14 April 2011
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/04/prweb5247054.htm

Announced today, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and national rice research institutes in Bangladesh and the Philippines have joined with Helen Keller International (HKI), a leading global health organization that reduces blindness and prevents malnutrition worldwide, in a new effort to further develop and evaluate Golden Rice as a potential tool to reduce vitamin A deficiency. Golden Rice is a unique type of rice that contains beta carotene, a source of vitamin A.

Vitamin A deficiency is the leading cause of preventable blindness in children. It also impairs immune system function and increases the risk of death from certain childhood diseases. Globally, approximately 670,000 children die every year and another 350,000 go blind because they are vitamin A deficient.

"IRRI and its partners have been working on Golden Rice for about ten years to develop a safe and effective way to address vitamin A deficiency, prevent blindness, and save lives," said Dr. Gerard Barry, Golden Rice Network coordinator and IRRI’s Golden Rice project leader. "Our latest stage of work is now supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and will bring in HKI a new partner from the nutrition sector to further understand how well Golden Rice can reduce vitamin A deficiency.”

HKI has been advocating the elimination of vitamin A deficiency for more than 40 years, working with governments and other partners to reach those most in need through various interventions.

"The most vulnerable children and women in hard-to-reach areas are often missed by existing interventions that can improve vitamin A status, including vitamin A supplementation, food fortification, dietary diversification, and promotion of optimal breast-feeding," said Ms. Nancy Haselow, HKI vice president and regional director for Asia-Pacific, who has been designing, implementing, and testing vitamin A delivery programs for more than 20 years.

"We welcome the opportunity to see if Golden Rice is efficacious and can fill the gap in access to adequate vitamin A for all vulnerable groups in a sustainable way,” she added.

According to research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, daily consumption of a very modest amount of Golden Rice perhaps a cup (or around 150 g uncooked weight) could supply 50% of the Recommended Daily Allowance of vitamin A for an adult.

"Since a large proportion of vitamin A deficient children and their mothers reside in rice-consuming populations, particularly in Asia, Golden Rice should substantially reduce the prevalence and severity of vitamin A deficiency, and prevent at least hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths and cases of blindness every year,” said Dr. Alfred Sommer, professor and dean emeritus, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Sommer is an internationally acclaimed public health scientist who has been at the forefront of research into vitamin A deficiency, leading major studies that were fundamental to the current understanding of the effect of vitamin A supplementation on mortality, malnutrition, and blindness.

The Bangladesh Rice Research Institute(BRRI) and the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) have been working with IRRI on Golden Rice for several years. They are leading the development of Golden Rice varieties in their countries.

"We are conducting our breeding carefully to make sure that the new Golden Rice variety retains the same high yield, pest resistance, and excellent grain and eating qualities while helping to address the pervasive problem of vitamin A deficiency in the Philippines," said Dr. Antonio Alfonso, chief science specialist and Golden Rice team leader at PhilRice.

"I am delighted with our success in breeding a Golden Rice version of Bangladesh's most popular rice variety, BRRI dhan29, which we hope will make a substantial contribution to reducing vitamin A deficiency across the country,” said Dr. Alamgir Hossain, principal plant breeder at BRRI.

Golden Rice, which is genetically modified, will be available to farmers and consumers only after it has been approved by national regulatory bodies. This project will also generate and collect safety information related to Golden Rice for submission to regulators as early as 2013 in the Philippines and 2015 in Bangladesh. Golden Rice is expected to cost farmers about the same as other rice, and they will be able to save seeds for replanting.

The inventors of Golden Rice, Professor Ingo Potrykus and Dr. Peter Beyer, donated the technology in 2000 as a gift for resource-poor farmers in developing countries because of its enormous potential to benefit public health.

This non-profit Golden Rice project is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development, and other donors.

Fast facts

    *      Golden Rice contains beta carotene and is being developed to help tackle vitamin A deficiency.
    *      This project will further evaluate and develop Golden Rice for Bangladesh and the Philippines.
    *      Helen Keller International will assess how daily consumption of Golden Rice can help reduce vitamin A deficiency.
    *      Golden Rice is genetically modified and will be available to farmers and consumers only after it has been approved by national authorities.

About IRRI:
The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is a nonprofit independent research and training organization that develops new rice varieties and rice crop management techniques that help rice farmers improve the yield and quality of their rice in an environmentally sustainable way. The organization works with public and private sector partners in national agricultural research and extension systems in major rice-growing countries to do research, training, and knowledge transfer. Their social and economic research also informs governments to help them formulate policy to improve the equitable supply of rice.