Wednesday, June 05, 2019

Golden rice

I hadn't heard much about it for years. It turns out there's a good reason for that. It took a while get get the bugs worked out of it.
The initial version of the crop actually put very low amounts of the desired nutrient in the edible portions of rice. Switching to another form of the gene (one from corn) solved that, but the new version ended up with the added gene inserted in the middle of a gene essential for the activity of a plant growth-regulating hormone. Switching to a different version of the same plant solved that but delayed the process. Once field trials were finally ready to start in 2013, anti-GMO activists destroyed the plantings, setting everything back again.

1 comment:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Poor countries should sue those organisations for the lost health benefits, including death.