MUÑOZ SCIENCE CITY, Nueva Ecija - Imagine that just by eating rice, one can already get a percentage of the body's daily requirement for Vitamin A. More so, for the poor population, biofortification of rice would be a cheaper means to help them get this essential micronutrient.

This latest breakthrough in agricultural biotechnology that was introduced by Filipino scientists the Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) is expected to provide the much-needed supplemental Vitamin A needed by most Filipinos. Vitamin A deficiency is endemic among impoverished Filipinos and is known to be the major cause of blindness among Filipinos.

Data from the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) show that four out of 10 Filipino children six months to five years old, and two out of 10 pregnant and lactating women are Vitamin A deficient showing a probability rate of four million preschoolers at risk of going blind.

Dr. Antonio Alfonso, a plant breeder and molecular biologist at PhilRice Plant Breeding and Biotechnology Division in Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, said that his group is no longer conducting research to develop the genetically modified (GM) Vitamin A rice, Golden Rice, because the seed varieties the agency has been using have already been developed by foreign researchers.

Golden Rice was "invented" by Professor Ingo Potrykus of the Institute for Plant Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (SFIT) in Zurich, Switzerland, and Professor Peter Beyer of the Center for Applied Biosciences, University of Freiburg, Germany, an information from the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) website said.

It was developed from 1991 to 2002 with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, SFIT, the European Union and the Swiss Federal Office for Education, and Science.

In the Philippines, PhilRice is biofortifying the local rice with Vitamin A with the use of genetic engineering.

Food fortification is a program of the government, under the Food Fortification Act 2000, which covers the fortification of a number of goods, including rice, with iron and Vitamin A.

"Rice is being used for Vitamin A biofortification because, being a staple food, its intake would be of no or small cost to the poor people who could not afford to buy other food or supplements as source of Vitamin A," Alfonso said. "At the same time, the rice seeds can easily reach the rural, areas."

"Scientifically, rice is used because. Like all green plants, it has genes necessary yo produce carotenoids - a class of yellow to red pigments in plants, including carotenes, which is converted to Vitamin A in the liver," Alfonso said.

Worldwide, Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) causes one million to 2.5 million deaths in preschool children, half a million children affected VAD.

IRRI said the delivery of Golden Rice from its investors was made possible as a result of the "donation" of intellectual property licenses from several companies, led by Syngenta, a multinational agribusiness company. Each company has licensed technology used in the research, free of charge.

To further expedite the introduction of Golden Rice to developing countries, a Humanitarian Board, composed of some public and private organizations, has been established. It is chaired by Potrykus, and includes Syngenta official and former Philippine Science Secretary Dr. William Padolina, representing IRRI.

Among the board's aims is to support individual developing countries and their national research institutes as they assess their interest in Golden Rice, and to facilitate information-sharing on the GM rice.