Infants in developing countries, who often are weaned on a rice gruel, are most at risk, said Ken Brown, director of the UC Davis international nutrition program. A fourth gene, which allowed researchers to track the genetic changes, also was added. Their work is being published today in the journal Science. It was an experiment that was so complicated that the scientific community did not believe it would work. At an international botanical congress in St. Louis earlier this year, Potrykus announced that his group also was trying to modify rice to increase its iron content and promote absorption of dietary iron.
Iron deficiency is the most common nutritional disorder in the world.
The new transgenic vitamin A rice may be the first to actually improve a crop's nutritional value to make it a better food, several experts said. Although farmers now routinely plant millions of acres every year with genetically engineered corn, soybeans and other crops, most commercial transgenic plants are designed to make crops cheaper and more efficient to cultivate, not make them more beneficial to eat. This is the beginning of a lot of things in biotechnology that will benefit consumers, especially in the Third World. The new strain of rice is a rich yellow in color, reflecting the high levels of beta carotene it contains. Not so long ago, rice was mostly overlooked in the race to genetically engineer the world's foodstuffs.