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Golden rice is allowed in the Philippines. Who and how will it help?

Sergey Syrov, XX2 century

A genetically modified crop capable of saving millions of lives is what they say about the so–called "golden rice", a variety containing more beta-carotene than usual. Golden rice is recognized as a safe food and is allowed in the Philippines, previously regulatory authorities allowed its use in the United States and Canada. But will a useful product get on the table of those whom it should save? A study published in the journal Technology in Society (Glover et al., Golden Rice and technology adoption theory: A study of seed choice dynamics among rice growers in the Philippines) suggests the opposite.

"Many large families with vitamin A deficiency do not even have land to grow rice," says one of the authors of the publication, Professor Glenn Davis Stone. "And those who live in the mountains will not plant it, because it was created on the basis of low–lying varieties of rice known as IR-64 and RSC-82."

The approval of golden rice in the Philippines is an important event for its creators, since for the first time the variety is allowed to be used where it should, in theory, solve the tasks assigned to geneticists. But will it? Professor Stone and his colleagues are doubtful.

The first problem is the insufficient amount of seed material. A large producer capable of growing a sufficient number of seeds should take up the task. The second problem identified during the study by Stone and his colleagues is that small farms are not eager to experiment with a new, unusual variety.

When promoting the idea of introducing golden rice, it was said that it could solve the problem of vitamin A deficiency already in the early 2000s. Unfortunately, even now everything is not as simple as expected. In the Philippines, they still eat regular rice, and the government solves the problem of vitamin deficiency using more traditional methods. And not without success – during the time that golden rice goes from the laboratory of geneticists to rice fields and store shelves, the level of vitamin A deficiency among children in the Philippines has halved.

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