SLU news
The golden rice - a key to fight malnutrition?
Published: 07 February 2023
A new kind of rice has reached the market, the golden rice, a crop developed to fight malnutrition in low-income countries. The topic is debated since the plant is produced through GMO. Listen to the SLU-professor Jens Sundström telling more about this in the link below.
The Golden Rice has for the first time ever been harvested in large scale after many years of research and development. It is a crop enriched with Vitamin A to help fight malnutrition and poverty. This first harvest was made in Phillipines, but several other countries are interested in producing the crop.
- It is for people who live in poor conditions and do not have the opportunity to eat a varied diet, says Jens Sundström, lecturer in biotechnology at SLU to SVT.
The name, the Golden rice, comes from the two genes of corn added to the rice. The genes enable the rice to produce beta-carotene, which is transformed to vitamin A in the body.
- I think that several countries are now looking at how things are going in the Philippines. I know that people are interested, among other things, in Bangladesh, where there is also widespread vitamin A deficiency, he says to SVT.
Read the full article at SVT and listen to Jens Sundström (Swe)
Blog post: Navigation towards food security and nutrition through a rice based agrifood system
Even though SLU has no research on the Golden rice, there is successful on-going research about a low-methane rice. Results have not yet been published.
Read more about the research on low-methane rice at SLU here